I believe that the Cuban people’s uneasiness, disappointment and uncertainty, which you can pick up on in the street, is what contributed to a group of people (myself included) to stand up to one of these new regulations.

Maintaining this current situation is very expensive, inefficiency becomes eternal, statistics are distorted, there are no incentives for foreign investment. The dilemma lies between the foolproof benefits in the medium/long term and the immediate shock to the economy once it is implemented, which might even make it collapse.

Grammy-award winning singer Albita Rodriguez is such a celebrated interpreter of Cuban music that when a new version of the opera Carmen was produced set in revolutionary Havana a role was created especially for her.

ACROSS THE COUNTRY, A NEW COHORT OF PROGRESSIVES IS RUNNING FOR—AND WINNING—ELECTIONS. The stunning victory of democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the Democratic congressional primary in New York is perhaps the most well-known, but she is far from alone. Most of these candidates are young, more than usual are people of color, many are women, several are Muslims, at least one is a refugee, at least one is transgender—and all are unabashedly left. Most come to electoral politics after years of activism around issues like immigration, climate and racism. They come out of a wide range of social movements and support policy demands that reflect the principles of those movements: labor rights, immigrant and refugee rights, women’s and gender rights, equal access to housing and education, environmental justice, and opposition to police violence and racial profiling. Some, though certainly not all, identify not just with the policies of socialism but with the fundamental core values and indeed the name itself, usually in the form of democratic socialism.

Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American woman in Detroit, just won the Democratic primary for the legendary Congressman John Conyers’ seat. Four women, two of them members of Democratic Socialists of America and all four endorsed by DSA, beat their male incumbent opponents in Pennsylvania state house primaries. Tahirah Amatul-Wadud is running an insurgent campaign for Congress against a longstanding incumbent in western Massachusetts, keeping her focus on Medicare-for-All and civil rights. Minnesota State Rep. Ilhan Omar, a former Somali refugee, won endorsement from the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and is running for Keith Ellison’s former congressional seat as an “intersectional feminist.” And there are more.

Many highlight their movement experience in their campaigns; they are champions of immigrant rights, healthcare, student debt organizing and the fight for $15. Intersectionality has grown stronger, as the extremism of Trump’s right-wing racist assault creates significant new gains in linking separate movements focused on racism, women’s rights, immigrant rights, climate, poverty, labor rights and more.

But mostly, we’re not seeing progressive and socialist candidates clearly link domestic issues with efforts to challenge war, militarism and the war economy. There are a few exceptions: Congressional candidate and Hawaii State Rep. Kaniela Ing speaks powerfully about U.S. colonialism in Hawaii, and Virginia State Rep. Lee J. Carter has spoken strongly against U.S. bombing of Syria, linking current attacks with the legacy of U.S. military interventions. There may be more. But those are exceptions; most of the new left candidates focus on crucial issues of justice at home.

A progressive foreign policy must reject U.S. military and economic domination and instead be grounded in global cooperation, human rights, respect for international law and privileging diplomacy over war.

It’s not that progressive leaders don’t care about international issues, or that our movements are divided. Despite too many common assumptions, it is not political suicide for candidates or elected officials to stake out progressive anti-war, anti-militarism positions. Quite the contrary: Those positions actually have broad support within both our movements and public opinion. It’s just that it’s hard to figure out the strategies that work to connect internationally focused issues, anti-war efforts, or challenges to militarism, with the wide array of activists working on locally grounded issues. Some of those strategies seem like they should be easy—like talking about slashing the 53 cents of every discretionary federal dollar that now goes to the military as the easiest source to fund Medicare-for-all or free college education. It should be easy, but somehow it’s not: Too often, foreign policy feels remote from the urgency of domestic issues facing such crises. When our movements do figure out those strategies, candidates can easily follow suit.

Candidates coming out of our movements into elected office will need clear positions on foreign policy. Here are several core principles that should shape those positions.

A progressive foreign policy must reject U.S. military and economic domination and instead be grounded in global cooperation, human rights, respect for international law and privileging diplomacy over war. That does not mean isolationism, but instead a strategy of diplomatic engagement rather than—not as political cover for—destructive U.S. military interventions that have so often defined the U.S. role in the world.

Looking at the political pretexts for what the U.S. empire is doing around the world today, a principled foreign policy might start by recognizing that there is no military solution to terrorism and that the global war on terror must be ended.

More broadly, the militarization of foreign policy must be reversed and diplomacy must replace military action in every venue, with professional diplomats rather than the White House’s political appointees in charge. Aspiring and elected progressive and socialist office-holders should keep in mind the distinction between the successes and failures of Obama’s foreign policy. The victories were all diplomatic: moving towards normalization with Cuba, the Paris climate accord and especially the Iran nuclear deal. Obama’s greatest failures—in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen—all occurred because the administration chose military action over robust diplomacy.

Certainly, diplomacy has been a tool in the arsenal of empires, including the United States. But when we are talking about official policies governing relations between countries, diplomacy—meaning talking, negotiating and engaging across a table—is always, always better than engaging across a battlefield.

A principled foreign policy must recognize how the war economy has distorted our society at home—and commit to reverse it. The $717 billion of the military budget is desperately needed for jobs, healthcare and education here at home—and for a diplomatic surge and humanitarian and reconstruction assistance to people of countries devastated by U.S. wars and sanctions.

A principled foreign policy must acknowledge how U.S. actions—military, economic and climate-related—have been a driving force in displacing people around the world. We therefore have an enormous moral as well as legal obligation to take the lead in providing humanitarian support and refuge for those displaced—so immigration and refugee rights are central to foreign policy.

For too long the power of the U.S. empire has dominated international relations, led to the privileging of war over diplomacy on a global scale, and created a vast—and invasive—network of 800-plus military bases around the world.

Now, overall U.S. global domination is actually shrinking, and not only because of Trump’s actions. China’s economy is rapidly catching up, and its economic clout in Africa and elsewhere eclipses that of the United States. It’s a measure of the United States’ waning power that Europe, Russia and China are resisting U.S. efforts to impose new global sanctions on Iran. But the United States is still the world’s strongest military and economic power: Its military spending vastly surpasses that of the eight next strongest countries, it is sponsoring a dangerous anti-Iran alliance between Israel and the wealthy Gulf Arab states, it remains central to NATO decision-making, and powerful forces in Washington threaten new wars in North Korea and Iran. The United States remains dangerous.

Progressives in Congress have to navigate the tricky task of rejecting American exceptionalism. That means recognizing that it is often a good thing when U.S. global military and economic efforts fail, because they are generally aimed at maintaining domination and control. Without that U.S. domination, the possibility arises of a new kind of internationalism: to prevent and solve crises that arise from current and potential wars, to promote nuclear disarmament, to come up with climate solutions and to protect refugees.

That effort is increasingly important because of the rapid rise of right-wing xenophobic authoritarians seeking and winning power. Trump is now leading and enabling an informal global grouping of such leaders, from Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to Victor Orban in Hungary and others. Progressive elected officials in the United States can pose an important challenge to that authoritarian axis by building ties with their like-minded counterparts in parliaments and governments—possibilities include Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, among others. And progressive and leftist members of Congress will need to be able to work together with social movements to build public pressure for diplomatic initiatives not grounded in the interests of U.S. empire.

In addition to these broad principles, candidates and elected officials need critical analyses of current U.S. engagement around the world, as well as nuanced prescriptions for how to de-escalate militarily, and ramp up a new commitment to serious diplomacy.

GEOPOLITICAL POWER PLAYS

RUSSIA: Relations with Russia will be a major challenge for the foreseeable future. With 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons in U.S. and Russian hands, and the two powers deploying military forces on opposite sides of active battlefronts in Syria, it is crucial that relations remain open—not least to derail potential escalations and ensure the ability to stand down from any accidental clash.

Progressives and leftists in Congress will need to promote a nuanced, careful approach to Russia policy. And they will face a daunting environment in which to do so. They will have to deal with loud cries from right-wing war-mongers, mainly Republicans, and from neo-con interventionists in both parties, demanding a one-sided anti-Russia policy focused on increased sanctions and potentially even military threats. But many moderate and liberal Democrats—and much of the media—are also joining the anti-Russia crusade. Some of those liberals and moderates have likely bought into the idea of American exceptionalism, accepting as legitimate or irrelevant the long history of U.S. election meddling around the world and viewing the Russian efforts as somehow reaching a whole different level of outrageousness. Others see the anti-Russia mobilization solely in the context of undermining Trump.

But at the same time, progressive Congress members should recognize that reports of Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 and 2018 elections cannot be dismissed out of hand. They should continue to demand that more of the evidence be made public, and condemn the Russian meddling that has occurred, even while recognizing that the most serious threats to our elections come from voter suppression campaignsat home more than from Moscow. And they have to make clear that Trump’s opponents cannot be allowed to turn the president’s infatuation with Vladimir Putin into the basis for a new Cold War, simply to oppose Trump.

CHINA: The broad frame of a progressive approach should be to end Washington’s provocative military and economic moves and encourage deeper levels of diplomatic engagement. This means replacing military threats with diplomacy in response to Chinese moves in the South China Sea, as well as significant cuts in the ramped-up military ties with U.S. allies in the region, such as Vietnam. Progressive and socialist members of Congress and other elected officials will no doubt be aware that the rise of China’s economic dominance across Africa, and its increasing influence in parts of Latin America, could endanger the independence of countries in those parts of the Global South. But they will also need to recognize that any U.S. response to what looks like Chinese exploitation must be grounded in humility, acknowledging the long history of U.S. colonial and neocolonial domination throughout those same regions. Efforts to compete with Chinese economic assistance by increasing Washington’s own humanitarian and development aid should mean directing all funds through the UN, rather than through USAID or the Pentagon. That will make U.S. assistance far less likely to be perceived as—and to be—an entry point for exploitation.

NATO: A progressive position on NATO flies straight into the face of the partisan component of the anti-Trump resistance—the idea that if Trump is for it, we should be against it. For a host of bad reasons that have to do with personal enrichment and personal power, Trump sometimes takes positions that large parts of the U.S. and global anti-war and solidarity movements have long supported. One of those is NATO. During the Cold War, NATO was the European military face of U.S.-dominated Western anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, peace activists from around the world called for the dissolution of NATO as an anachronistic relic whose raison d’etre was now gone.

Instead, NATO used its 50th anniversary in 1999 to rebrand itself as defending a set of amorphous, ostensibly “Western” values such as democracy, rather than having any identifiable enemy—something like a military version of the EU, with the United States on board for clout. Unable to win UN Security Council support for war in Kosovo, the United States and its allies used NATO to provide so-called authorization for a major bombing campaign—in complete violation of international law—and began a rapid expansion of the NATO alliance right up to the borders of Russia. Anti-war forces across the world continued to rally around the call “No to NATO”—a call to dissolve the alliance altogether.

But when Trump, however falsely, claims to call for an end to the alliance, or shows disdain for NATO, anti-Trump politicians and media lead the way in embracing the military alliance as if it really did represent some version of human rights and international law. It doesn’t—and progressives in elected positions need to be willing to call out NATO as a militarized Cold War relic that shouldn’t be reconfigured to maintain U.S. domination in Europe or to mobilize against Russia or China or anyone else. It should be ended.

In fact, Trump’s claims to oppose NATO are belied by his actions. In his 2019 budget request he almost doubled the 2017 budget for the Pentagon’s “European Deterrence Initiative,” designed explicitly as a response to “threats from Russia.” There is a huge gap between Trump’s partisan base-pleasing condemnation of NATO and his administration&rdqou;s actual support for strengthening the military alliance. That contradiction should make it easier for progressive candidates and officeholders to move to cut NATO funding and reduce its power—not because Trump is against NATO but because the military alliance serves as a dangerous provocation toward war.

THE WAR ON TERROR

What George W. Bush first called “the global war on terror” is still raging almost 17 years later, though with different forms of killing and different casualty counts. Today’s reliance on airstrikes, drone attacks and a few thousand special forces has replaced the hundreds of thousands of U.S. and allied ground troops. And today hardly any U.S. troops are being killed, while civilian casualties are skyrocketing across the Middle East and Afghanistan. Officials from the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations have repeated the mantra that “there is no military solution” in Afghanistan, Syria, or Iraq or against terrorism, but their actions have belied those words. Progressive elected officials need to consistently remind the public and their counterparts that it is not possible to bomb terrorism out of existence. Bombs don’t hit “terrorism”; they hit cities, houses, wedding parties. And on those rare occasions when they hit the people actually named on the White House&rdqou;s unaccountable kill list, or “terrorist” list, the impact often creates more terrorists.

The overall progressive policy on this question means campaigning for diplomatic solutions and strategies instead of military ones. That also means joining the ongoing congressional efforts led by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and others to challenge the continued reliance on the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF).

In general, privileging diplomatic over war strategies starts with withdrawing troops and halting the arms sales that flood the region with deadly weapons. Those weapons too often end up in the hands of killers on all sides, from bands of unaccountable militants to brutally repressive governments, with civilians paying the price. Congress members should demand an end of massive arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other U.S. allies carrying out brutal wars across the Middle East, and they should call for an end to the practice of arming non-state proxies who kill even more people. They should call for a U.S. arms embargo on Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan and Israel (which presents a whole other set of arms-related challenges), while urging Russia to stop its arms sales to Syria, Iran and Pakistan. Given the power of the arms industries in the United States, arms embargoes are the most difficult—but perhaps the most important—part of ending the expanding Middle East wars.

Progressives in Congress should demand real support for UN-sponsored and other international peace initiatives, staffing whole new diplomatic approaches whose goal is political solutions rather than military victories—and taking funds out of military budgets to cover the costs. The goal should be to end these endless wars—not try to “win&rdqou; them.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE: The most important thing for candidates to know is that there has been a massive shift in public opinion in recent years. It is no longer political suicide to criticize Israel. Yes, AIPAC and the rest of the right-wing Jewish, pro-Israel lobbies remain influential and have a lot of money to throw around. (The Christian Zionist lobbies are powerful too, but there is less political difficulty for progressives to challenge them.) But there are massive shifts underway in U.S. Jewish publicopinion on the conflict, and the lobbies cannot credibly claim to speak for the Jewish community as a whole.

Outside the Jewish community, the shift is even more dramatic, and has become far more partisan: Uncritical support for Israel is now overwhelmingly a Republican position. Among Democrats, particularly young Democrats, support for Israel has fallen dramatically; among Republicans, support for Israel’s far-right government is sky-high. The shift is particularly noticeable among Democrats of color, where recognition of the parallels between Israeli oppression of Palestinians and the legacies of Jim Crow segregation in the United States and apartheid in South Africa is rising rapidly.

U.S. policy, unfortunately, has not kept up with that changing discourse. But modest gains are evident even there. When nearly 60 members of the House and Senate openly skipped Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech when he came to lobby Congress to vote against President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, the sky didn’t fall. The snub to the Israeli prime minister was unprecedented, but no one lost their seat because of it. Rep. Betty McCollum’s bill to protect Palestinian children from Israel’s vicious military juvenile detention system (the only one in the world) now has 29 co-sponsors, and the sky still isn’t falling. Members of Congress are responding more frequently to Israeli assaults on Gaza and the killing of protesters, often because of powerful movements among their constituents. When Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, the Israeli daily Ha’aretzacknowledged the divide: “While members of the Republican Party overwhelmingly expressed support for the move, Democrats were split between those who congratulated Trump for it and those who called it a dangerous and irresponsible action.”

That creates space for candidates and newly elected officials to respond to the growing portion of their constituencies that supports Palestinian rights. Over time, they must establish a rights-based policy. That means acknowledging that the quarter-century-long U.S.-orchestrated “peace process” based on the never-serious pursuit of a solution, has failed. Instead, left and progressive political leaders can advocate for a policy that turns over real control of diplomacy to the UN, ends support for Israeli apartheid and occupation, and instead supports a policy based on international law, human rights and equality for all, without privileging Jews or discriminating against non-Jews.

To progress from cautiously urging that Israel abide by international law, to issuing a full-scale call to end or at least reduce the $3.8 billion per year that Congress sends straight to the Israeli military, might take some time. In the meantime, progressive candidates must prioritize powerful statements condemning the massacre of unarmed protesters in Gaza and massive Israeli settlement expansion, demands for real accountability for Israeli violations of human rights and international law (including reducing U.S. support in response), and calls for an end to the longstanding U.S. protection that keeps Israel from being held accountable in the UN.

The right consistently accuses supporters of Palestinian rights of holding Israel to a double standard. Progressives in Congress should turn that claim around on them and insist that U.S. policy towards Israel—Washington’s closest ally in the region and the recipient of billions of dollars in military aid every year—hold Israel to exactly the same standards that we want the United States to apply to every other country: human rights, adherence to international law and equality for all.

Many supporters of the new crop of progressive candidates, and many activists in the movements they come out of, are supporters of the increasingly powerful, Palestinian-led BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement, that aims to bring non-violent economic pressure to bear on Israel until it ends its violations of international law. This movement deserves credit for helping to mainstream key demands—to end the siege of Gaza and the killing of protesters, to support investigations of Israeli violations by the International Criminal Court, to oppose Israel’s new “nation-state’ law—that should all be on lawmakers’ immediate agenda.

AFGHANISTAN: More than 100,000 Afghans and 2,000 U.S. troops have been killed in a U.S. war that has raged for almost 17 years. Not-Yet-President Trump called for withdrawal from Afghanistan, but within just a few months after taking office he agreed instead to send additional troops, even though earlier deployments of more than 100,000 U.S. troops (and thousands more coalition soldiers) could not win a military victory over the Taliban. Corruption in the U.S.-backed and -funded Afghan government remains sky-high, and in just the past three years, the Pentagon has lost track of how $3.1 billion of its Afghanistan funds were spent. About 15,000 US troops are still deployed, with no hope of a military victory for the United States.

Progressive members of Congress should demand a safe withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, acting on the long-held recognition that military force simply won’t work to bring about the political solution all sides claim to want.

Several pending bills also would reclaim the centrality of Congress’ role in authorizing war in general and in Afghanistan in particular—including ending the 2001 AUMF. Funding for humanitarian aid, refugee support, and in the future compensation and reparations for the massive destruction the U.S.-led war has wrought across the country, should all be on Congress’ agenda, understanding that such funding will almost certainly fail while U.S. troops are deployed.

IRAN: With U.S. and Iranian military forces facing each other in Syria, the potential for an unintentional escalation is sky-high. Even a truly accidental clash between a few Iranian and U.S. troops, or an Iranian anti-aircraft system mistakenly locking on to a U.S. warplane plane even if it didn’t fire, could have catastrophic consequences without immediate military-to-military and quick political echelon discussions to defuse the crisis. And with tensions very high, those ties are not routinely available. Relations became very dangerous when Trump withdrew the United States from the multi-lateral nuclear deal in May. (At that time, a strong majority of people in the United States favored the deal, and less than one in three wanted to pull out of it.)

The United States continues to escalate threats against Iran. It is sponsoring a growing regional anti-Iran alliance, with Israel and Saudi Arabia now publicly allied and pushing strongly for military action. And Trump has surrounded himself with war-mongers for his top advisers, including John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, who have both supported regime change in Iran and urged military rather than diplomatic approaches to Iran.

Given all that, what progressive elected officials need to do is to keep fighting for diplomacy over war. That means challenging U.S. support for the anti-Iran alliance and opposing sanctions on Iran. It means developing direct ties with parliamentarians from the European and other signatories to the Iran nuclear deal, with the aim of collective opposition to new sanctions, re-legitimizing the nuclear deal in Washington and reestablishing diplomacy as the basis for U.S. relations with Iran.

It should also mean developing a congressional response to the weakening of international anti-nuclear norms caused by the pull-out from the Iran deal. That means not just supporting the nonproliferation goals of the Iran nuclear deal, but moving further towards real disarmament and ultimately the abolition of nuclear weapons. Progressives in and outside of Congress should make clear that nuclear nonproliferation (meaning no one else gets to have nukes) can’t work in the long run without nuclear disarmament (meaning that the existing nuclear weapons states have to give them up). That could start with a demand for full U.S. compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which calls for negotiations leading to “nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament.”

SYRIA: Progressive candidates and elected officials should support policies designed to end, not “win” the war. That means withdrawing troops, ceasing airstrikes and drone attacks, and calling for an arms embargo on all sides of the multiple proxy war. The civil war component of the multiple wars in Syria is winding down as the regime consolidates its control, but the sectarian, regional and global components of that war have not disappeared, so continuing a call for an arms embargo is still important. The first step is to permanently end the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s “arm and train” policies that have prolonged the war and empowered some of its most dangerous actors.

There will also need to be negotiations between the regional and global actors that have been waging their own wars in Syria, wars that have little to do with Syria itself, but with Syrians doing the bulk of the dying. That means support for the UN’s and other internationally-sponsored de-escalation efforts, and serious engagement with Russia towards a permanent ceasefire, as well as the arms embargo. U.S. policy should include absolute prohibitions on Washington’s regional allies—including Saudi Arabia and Turkey—sending U.S.-provided arms into Syria. And progressive supporters of diplomacy should also maintain pressure on the United States to back multi-lateral diplomatic processes organized by the UN and others—on humanitarian issues in Geneva, and political issues in Astana. Cutting the United States’ multi-billion dollar arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Turkey and other U.S. allies involved in the Syrian wars would also lend legitimacy to U.S. efforts within those diplomatic processes to press Russia to stop providing arms to the Assad regime.

IRAQ: Congress has largely abrogated its responsibilities even as the 15-year war initiated by the United States continues. Progressive policymakers would do well to join the existing efforts to end—not replace, but cancel—the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force against Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq, and reopen congressional debate, with the goal of ending funding for war in Iraq once and for all. When President Obama withdrew the last troops from Iraq at the end of 2011, stating that “war in Iraq ends this month,” many assumed that the authorization ended as well. But it was never officially repealed and had no expiration date, and three years later Obama claimed that the then-12-year-old authorization justified the war against ISIS in Iraq. While Trump has relied primarily on the 2001 AUMF, the Iraq-specific authorization of 2002 remains in place and should be withdrawn.

In the meantime, progressives in Congress should support many of the same policies for Iraq as for Syria: withdraw the troops and special forces, stop the assassination program that is the heart of Washington’s “counter-terrorism” campaign and cease sending arms. Congress should end funding to force the closure of the network of small “forward operating bases” and other U.S. military bases that may remain in U.S. hands in Iraq despite earlier agreements to turn them over to the Iraqi government. The U.S. must figure out new ways to provide financial compensation and support to the people whose country and society has been shredded by more than a dozen years of crippling U.S.-led economic sanctions bookended by two devastating wars (Desert Storm, starting in 1991, and the Iraq War, starting in 2003)—while somehow avoiding the further empowerment of corrupt and sectarian political and military leaders.

YEMEN AND SAUDI ARABIA: The ongoing Saudi-led war against Yemen reflects the most deadly front of Saudi Arabia’s competition with Iran for regional hegemony. The United States is providing indirect and direct support, including U.S. Air Force pilots providing in-air refueling so Saudi and UAE warplanes can bomb Yemen more efficiently, and Green Berets fighting alongside Saudi troops on the border, in what the New York Times called “a continuing escalation of America’s secret wars.”

The U.S.-backed Saudi war against Yemen has also created what the UN has declared the world’s most serious humanitarian crisis. Congress’ first action must be to immediately end all U.S. involvement in the war. Next, Congress must reject all approvals for arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE as long as they continue to bomb and blockade Yemen.

Ending these arms sales may be a serious challenge, given the power of the arms manufacturers’ lobby, Israel’s strong support of Saudi Arabia against Iran and the fact that Saudi Arabia remains the top U.S. arms customer. But recent efforts and relatively close votes in both the House and Senate, while not successful, indicate that challenging the longstanding process of providing the Saudis with whatever weapons they want may be closer to reality than anticipated. The House called the U.S. military involvement in the Saudi war in Yemen “unauthorized.” Reps. Ro Khanna, Marc Pocan and others have introduced numerous House bills in recent months aimed at reducing U.S. arms sales and involvement in the Saudi-led assault. In the Senate, a March resolution to end U.S. military involvement in the Yemen war failed by only 11 votes, a much narrower margin than anticipated. Progressive candidates and new members of Congress should support all those efforts, and move further with a call for ending the longstanding U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia, especially military sales and support for the Saudi-Israeli partnership against Iran.

A QUICK GLANCE AT SOME OTHER POLICY QUESTIONS

NORTH KOREA: Progressive elected officials will need to support Trump’s diplomatic initiatives, challenging mainstream Democrats willing to abandon diplomacy because Trump supports it (however tactically or temporarily). Progressives will also need to condemn U.S. military provocations that undermine that same diplomacy, and build public and congressional support for the inter-Korean diplomatic moves already underway. That should include pushing for exemptions in the U.S.-imposed sanctions that would allow inter-Korean economic and other initiatives to go forward. Progressives in Congress can also play a major role in supporting people-to-people diplomacy with North Korea, and they can lead the way in replacing the current armistice with a peace treaty finally ending the Korean War.

AFRICA: Across the continent, there is an urgent need to reverse the militarization of foreign policy, including reducing the size, breadth of responsibilities and theater of operations of AFRICOM. The wide-ranging but unauthorized and largely secretive special operations and other military actions across the continent violate not only international law, but U.S. domestic law as well.

LATIN AMERICA: In Latin America, there is an urgent need for a new anti-interventionist policy, not least to stop the current attempts to take advantage of serious domestic crises in Venezuela, Nicaragua and elsewhere. Progressives will need to challenge the U.S. economic and foreign policies that create refugees from Central America in particular (including the consequences of the U.S. wars of the 1980s), even while fighting to protect those migrants seeking safety in the United States as a result of those earlier policies. Regarding Mexico, Congress needs to fight for a U.S. position in trade negotiations that is not based on economic nationalism, but rather on making sure that Mexican workers and U.S. workers are both equally lifted up. Left policymakers will also have the chance to play a leading role in forging a new relationship with Mexico’s just-elected progressive President Lopez-Obrador.

All of the areas where U.S. wars are or were underway, as well as places where U.S. economic and climate policies have helped create crises threatening people’s lives, also become areas from which migrants are forced to flee their homes. U.S. policymakers must acknowledge that U.S. policies are direct causes of the refugee crises that exist in and around the war zones and climate crisis zones of the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere—and that the refugees seeking asylum in Europe, and the far fewer trying to come to the United States, are a consequence of those policies. So progressive candidates and policymakers should support massive expansion of funding for these victims of war, including humanitarian support in their home regions and acceptance of far greater numbers of refugees into the United States. They must directly challenge the xenophobic policies of the Trump administration that include the Muslim Ban, the separation of children from their families at the border and the vast reduction in refugees accepted into this country. In Congress, that might include introducing bills to cut funding for ICE or eliminate the institution altogether.

Finally, progressive candidates and elected officials will need to continue to craft policy proposals that recognize what happens when the U.S. wars come home. This requires more voices in Congress challenging the military budget because it’s used to kill people abroad and because the money is needed for jobs, health care and education at home. It means challenging Islamophobia rising across the United States because of how it threatens Muslims in the United States and because it is used to build support for wars against predominantly Muslim countries. It means exposing—on the floor of the House and beyond—the fact that the Muslim bans targeted primarily countries the United States was bombing, sanctioning or stationing soldiers in. And it means being clear that protecting refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants has to include ending the wars that create refugees in the first place.

Certainly, we shouldn’t expect every progressive or even every socialist running for national office to become an instant expert on every complicated piece of U.S. foreign policy. And for those running for state and local office, there may seem to be even less urgency. But we’ve seen how the Poor People’s Campaign, with its inclusion of militarism and the war economy as one of its four central targets (along with racism, poverty and environmental destruction), has demonstrated to all of our movements the importance of—and a model for—including an anti-war focus within multi-issue state and local mobilizations. The Movement for Black Lives has created one of the strongest internationalist and anti-war platforms we’ve seen in years—including calls for cutting the military budget, supporting Palestinian rights, stopping the Global War on Terror and the so-called War on Drugs, ending the militarized U.S. interventions across Africa, and linking U.S. military and economic policies with the rise in Haitian and other—predominantly Black—immigration.

Immigrant rights activists are linking movements for sanctuary (and against ICE) with opposition to the wars that create refugees. Campaignsare underway to reject the training of U.S. police by Israeli police and military forces. Battles are being waged to get local law enforcement agencies to refuse Pentagon offers of weapons and equipment left over from U.S. wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere. These campaigns all play out at the local and state level.

So especially for those running for Congress, but really for all candidates at every political level and venue in this country, there is a clear need for a strong, principled position on at least a few key foreign policy issues. And the key to making that happen still lies with our movements.

With the political world holding its breath in anticipation, Hope n' Change finally endorses a Presidential candidate...

While lacking the enthusiasm evinced by many Trump supporters, Hope n' Change opines that "Donald Trump is potentially a yuuuuge disrupter at a time when our political system needs huge disruption. Our nation would be far more likely to survive his possible policy failures than even a single term of Hillary Clinton's toxic policy successes."

This belief is immediately confirmed when yet another federal agency is revealed to have been corrupted by proximity to the Clinton Machine...

After laundry-listing the many, many ways that Hillary had lied, evaded, and thoroughly compromised national security with her secret email server, FBI Director James Comey decides that no charges should be pressed because:

A) He is apparently a complete political whoreB) His family was being held at gunpointC) He believes that women (bless their hearts) are just too darn stupid to understand computers, national security, and lawsD) Hillary made a pact with Satan which involves fellating lepers in Hell for all eternityE) All of the above. Which, frankly, we're pretty sure is the right answer.

Energized by this undeserved "Get Out of Jail Free" card, Hillary immediately seizes on new ways to make voters hate her...

Following a black sniper's assassination of five Dallas police officers who were providing security for a "Black Lives Matter" protest, Hillary bravely declares that the actual problem is that white people need to do a better job of listening and, bizarrely, that Wall Street needs greater transparency. Based on her strong statement, an increasing number of voters begin to suspect she's using narcotics.

Meanwhile, GOP heads explode when Senator Ted Cruz appears at the Republican National Convention and speaks passionately about the need to defend freedom and the Constitution, but fails to endorse Trump by name for reasons no one can explain...

But July isn't done with us yet. Following a series of scandals revealing sabotage against the Bernie Sanders campaign, the DNC meets to celebrate democracy by anointing a candidate selected by unelected "superdelegates"...

AUGUST

With the wind at her back, which is helpful in keeping her upright, Hillary starts fleshing out what revolutionary policies she hopes to bring to the presidency other than the ability to pee while sitting down...

But concerns grow about the candidate's health as she is increasingly seen struggling with simple tasks like speaking without coughing up a lung, getting both eyes to point in the same direction, or telling the truth...

But undaunted and pumped full of amphetamines and opioids, Hillary throws herself into intense preparation for the upcoming Presidential debates...

And speaking of sex escapades (which is pretty much synonymous with speaking about the Clintons) another one rears its...uh...head when Anthony Weiner, the oft-disgraced husband of Hillary's right hand woman Huma Abedin, is discovered to be emailing bonergrams to an under-aged girl...

Saying "enough is enough," Huma gives up on Weiner (not that there's anything wrong with that) and prepares to face new challenges in...

SEPTEMBER

When asked to answer yet more questions about her totally illegal scheme to evade the Freedom of Information Act and, as an unexpected bonus, give away all of our nation's secrets, Hillary is struck - apparently forcefully - with a brilliant idea...

Yes, the woman who wants to be President of the United States claims to have such substantial brain damage that she can't remember anything which happened while she was engaged in criminal activity. Which is to say her entire adult life.

Shortly thereafter, Clinton speaks to an adoring throng of hired enthusiasts at an LGBT fundraiser and makes a statement which convinces even hardened skeptics that she has gangrenous grey matter...

"To be grossly generalistic," she grossly cackled, "you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic— you name it!"

Surprisingly, at least to Democrats, it turns out that many Americans don't appreciate being mocked, disparaged, and slandered by corrupt elites. Which is why it's (ahem) fortunate for Clinton that the public is soon distracted by a terrorist bomb blast...

29 people are hurt (and thankfully none killed) when a bomb is detonated in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York. Chelsea Clinton swears "it's just a coincidence" and "I'm working on an alibi."

Hoping to get her media narrative back on track, Hillary Clinton puts avuncular socialist Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail to say that he no longer despises everything Hillary stands for, and that he's come to the life-changing (and possibly life-saving) realization that she is the most honest, refreshing, and ethical politician ever born...

In fairness to Bernie, maybe he was just trying on his "shameless whore" costume to make ready for...

OCTOBER

Suddenly, the campaign is rocked by a series of well-coordinated (if loosely fact-checked) attacks on Donald Trump's finances...

The NY Times goes "front page crazy" with a story screaming that over the past few years, Donald Trump may have paid all the federal income tax he legally owed - which possibly, and only possibly, equaled "none." Not only is "Man Pays Correct Amount of Taxes" not a scandal, it's not even interesting.

What is interesting is that the story was written based on illegally obtained information which was leaked to the public. Democratic spokespeople offer high praise for the publication of illegally leaked documents, then report a weird feeling "like a crow just stepped on my grave."

In a shocking revelation that even offends serial rapist Bill Clinton, an old audiotape reveals that Donald Trump once used the word "pussy" in a conversation which did not involve cats. Even worse, a (very small) parade of women come forward, dabbing tears, to share tortured memories of being "kissed without permission" by Donald Trump, who used only Tic Tacs for breath control.

Unfortunately for Hillary, none of this is as interesting as Wikileaks' release of thousands of documents detailing the corruption of the Clinton Foundation, Hillary's "pay for play" use of the State Department to solicit bribes, and the overall sleaziness of everyone in the Democratic party.

Suddenly finding illegally obtained information which was leaked to the public abhorrent, the media and the White House blame Russian hackers because it sounds better than "our own idiocy." Joe Biden warns of draconian counter measures...

In the midst of all this, early voting begins, with record numbers of voters flooding to the polls to decide which of the two least popular candidates in American history will win...

But wait! With Halloween in the air, James Comey doesn't need to dress up as a ghost to scare the sheet out of Hillary - he simply reopens her "thing that wouldn't die" email espionage case only days before the election.

Hilariously, it turns out that in the course of investigating Anthony Weiner's underage sexting activities, the FBI has discovered thousands of Hillary's State Department emails on his personal laptop...as well as on his laptop computer.

And so the stage is set for...

NOVEMBER

Following a hostage video in which James Comey, bruised and bound, says that nothing suspicious other than Top Secret documents was found on Weiner's "spank bank" computer, Election Day arrives at last.

Soon after which the grins fade, the champagne goes flat, and (according to trustworthy sources on the Left) Armageddon arrives...

Trump wins to the shock and disbelieving horror of liberals everywhere...

Apparently unaware of how the American voting system works, those on the Left are further devastated by the realization that while Hillary won the popular vote, it's only the critical electoral college vote that decides the Presidency...

While many anti-Americans take the news of Trump's victory badly, perhaps the most convincing display of grief comes from Fidel Castro who actually goes to the trouble of dropping dead...

Which at long last brings us to...

DECEMBER

In the weeks following the election, it becomes clear that American voters were sick of being denigrated, disrespected, and lied to by their own government. Tired of seeing their health insurance costs skyrocket while their benefits plummeted. And unwilling to accept a stagnant economy which seemingly offered jobs only to hedge fund managers and fry cooks.

Granted, not everyone saw the election results in the same way...

When his analysis is roundly laughed at, Barack Obama goes back to his default position of claiming that the election was somehow "hacked" by evil Russians who, inexplicably, liked the idea of Donald Trump having a nuclear arsenal.

The soon-to-be ex-president declares the alleged hacking to be a grave and immediate existential threat to our nation, then takes swift action by boarding Air Force One for another extended, multi-million dollar vacation in Hawaii...

Back on the mainland, the electoral college finally meets to officially cast their votes. And once again, a dazed and broken Hillary has to settle for second place...

With only days left in the year, Americans finally breathe a sigh of relief - confident that they can enjoy the holidays without any vacationing presidents suddenly launching a vicious sneak attack on one of our closest allies. They are, of course, wrong...

With assistance (and likely direction) from the Obama administration, the U.N. passes a resolution condemning Israel, eroding that nation's legitimacy and chances for eventual peace. It is a transparently petty and vindictive act from a petty and vindictive president bent on burning the world down if he can't be in charge.

In the final days of his wretched administration, he also admits floods of refugees and illegals into the country, grants early release to a record number of felons, and puts thousands of new regulations in place to hamper the American economy under Donald Trump.

Which is why the stroke of midnight on December 31st has never been sweeter...

Happy New Year from Stilton Jarlsberg and Hope n' Change Cartoons...which, after 8 long years, finally has actual hope for change.

If we had to sum up 2016 in a single word, it would be...unprintable. Seriously, we'd be working hard to come up with the vilest, most appalling, utterly disgusting and likely illegal word in our rich, albeit genuinely filthy vocabulary - and even then we'd fail to do justice to this rotten collection of months.

Fortunately, we don't have to sum things up in a single word. We have this entire page to work with, so let's dive straight into...

JANUARY

The year hits the ground running (like an abscessed boil) when the Post Office releases a "Forever" stamp commemorating the Muslim festival Eid al-Adha, which honors the willingness of Ibrahim to slit his son's throat after being "triple dog dared" by Allah. As part of the festival, modern Muslims are still expected to sacrifice their best farm animal...assuming they have the financial ability to first buy it an orange jumpsuit and get it to pose for a Youtube video.

And speaking of people associated with Youtube videos, Hillary Clinton stays busy denying that she ever had classified documents on her private email server. An assertion which, like everything else Hillary has ever said, turns out to be wildly untrue.

Of course, not all newsworthy events were domestic. Or even comprehensible...

John "You Rang?" Kerry comes out with the least encouraging pronouncement imaginable about the throat-cutting, suicide-bombing, allegedly non-Islamic murderers of ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, or whatever the hell other name the administration thinks likely to be unrecognized by Democratic voters.

Specifically, Kerry further downgrades our nation's goal from "destroying, degrading, or disrupting" the maniacal killers to merely "denting" them. His goal apparently being to make Hillary look like only the second worst Secretary of State ever, just in time for...

FEBRUARY

Early in the Democratic debate process, Martin O'Malley shocks everyone by announcing that he'd dropped out of the race - which was the first time anyone knew he'd been in the race.

Following Hillary Clinton's discovery in Iowa that she is less popular among young females than a yeast infection, Hillary asks herself what vivacious, high-powered celebrity superstar could help her reel in youthful female votes in New Hampsire, and she comes up with...

But just as things get really bleak for Hillary, the entire political landscape is changed by an unexpected death...

Beloved conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia suddenly dies in bed with a pillow on his head. A local judge pronounces the death due to natural causes without seeing the body or ordering an autopsy, because Obamacare doesn't cover those things.

In the following days, Obama decides to skip Scalia's funeral owing to an absolutely unavoidable scheduling conflict involving a critical tee time...

The country will not see such a blatantly petty snub again until, well, a few days later in...

MARCH

"If I didn't attend a funeral for a sitting Supreme Court Justice," the president may well have said, "I sure as hell won't be wasting my time going to one for some first lady. There's nothing less important than a first lady!"

In his place, the president appropriately sends...the first lady.

And speaking of skipping commitments, seemingly unstoppable primary candidate Donald Trump has a few clearly expressed ideas on the subject...

But of course, there's more than just an election going on. Barack Obama is still holding the reins and shaping critical foreign policy. Which is how we ended up with...

In his never-ending quest to build a legacy, the president tries to normalize relations with the oppressive communist dictatorship of Cuba in hopes of increasing the number of investment opportunities for his wealthy donors, and decreasing the number of Cuban immigrants whose children might grow up to become conservative GOP presidential candidates.

But only days later, the world is again shocked by a brutal act of terrorism - this time in a Brussels airport. Despite his busy travel schedule, Obama immediately swings into action...

Rather than doing diddly-squat about the carnage in Brussels, Obama attends a baseball game with new BFF Raul Castro, then jets off to Argentina where he performes a pelvis-grinding tango at a state dinner to prove his masculinity to ISIS.

Which brings us to...

APRIL

To help shore up support from women who just can't seem to understand the whole complicated "birds & bees" thing, Hillary declares that "unborn persons" have no rights - making it perfectly acceptable to take viable children in the final days (or hours) of gestation and turn them into chop suey. An observation that Bernie Sanders quickly echoes, while admitting that it's put him off Chinese take-out for awhile.

But life and death issues soon take a backseat to a far more important crisis in America...

Springsteen and other (ahem) "artists" boycott North Carolina following passage of a law which segregates bathroom privileges based exclusively on an individual's God-given plumbing rather than their current (and sometimes whimsically flexible) gender self-identification. This kicks off a firestorm of controversy around the country as liberals try to force businesses to create new bathrooms for each of the 51 sexual genders (no, really) recognized by Facebook, or at least let anyone who enjoys peeing in front of kids do so to fight discrimination.

The country becomes so embroiled in the issue that it becomes necessary for Barack Obama to remind the nation who truly suffers from discrimination in our wretched country...

The tone deaf president assembles a group of allegedly popular rappers (including Nicki Minaj, Busta Rhymes, J. Cole, Wale, DJ Khaled, and others we couldn't possibly pick out of a police line-up) to help with his "Brother's Keeper" initiative which is designed to encourage young black men to avoid incarceration for undocumented acts of wealth redistribution.

Unfortunately, during the president's remarks, rapper Rick Ross's court-ordered ankle bracelet goes off. It turns out that the man selected by Mr. Obama to serve as an exemplary racial role model is required to wear the device until his trial date for aggravated assault and battery, pistol-whipping, and kidnapping.

Were the other dignitaries at the summit nonplussed? Based on their actual pictures below, we're guessing not...

Meanwhile, as the primaries wear on, people finally start realizing that Trump might actually become the GOP nominee...

By the way, in case you don't know, the cartoon above is a tribute to "Forbidden Planet," which is the best sci-fi movie ever made. If you've never seen it, get your hands on it and watch it NOW while the rest of us move on to...

MAY

By a significant margin, Hoosiers go to the polls to declare that they find Trump to be the candidate who is outstanding in the field. And trust us, Indiana folk (like us!) love jokes about fields. But feeling distinctly un-loved, Cruz says "enough" and drops out of the race, practically guaranteeing Trump's nomination.

Assuming, of course, that he doesn't fall prey to the latest death-dealing malady inflaming the media...

In response to the dread threat hypothetically presented by mosquito-borne Zika virus, Barack Obama requests $2 billion to prevent the blood-sucking parasites coming across our southern border from wreaking destruction. The $2 billion will be used to put the young mosquitoes in good schools, settle their families in middle class neighborhoods, and give the grown mosquitoes some walking around money until they can find permanent blood-sucking jobs in government.

That is, unless someone intends to drastically reduce the number of blood-sucking jobs in government...

Donald Trump "seals the deal" when his delegate count pushes over the magic number of 1,237 with multiple states left to go to further pad his margin of victory. The people have spoken - and they're using very short (frequently 4-letter) words as they storm into...

JUNE

Because Donald Trump's blunt candor is generating so many news stories, Barack Obama jumps back into the erudition spotlight with a devastatingly brutal dissection of contemporaneous political rhetoric and offers wise analytical advice...

Of course, there's no "okey-doke" going on in the Democratic primaries. Everything is honest, legit, and above board...

Bernie Sanders grows peevish when the Associated Press declares Hillary to be the overall winner of Democratic primaries which haven't happened yet. It's almost like a conspiracy of some sort is working against him - but that's crazy, right?

Then without warning...

Terror returns to the United States in the form of an ISIS-inspired lunatic who kills and wounds over 100 people at a Gay nightclub in Orlando, before being sent straight to Hell by a policeman's bullet.

Authorities struggle to discern the killer's motives, having nothing to go on other than his actual 911 phone call in which he swears allegiance to ISIS, and shouts"Allahu Akbar" during his death-dealing spree.

Such a vile act is obviously unacceptable to the Obama administration, and they move quickly to let future terrorists know what they'll be up against...

Frankly, all of these events are getting so overwhelming that Hope n' Change needs a little time off - so we play hooky for a week, confident that it will be a slow period for news.

Seabourn has received approval to begin sailing to Cuba from Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico, starting with a 12-day cruise aboard Seabourn Sojourn departing Miami on November 4, 2019.

Seabourn becomes Carnival Corporation's third cruise brand currently approved to sail to Cuba, according to a statement.

Guests can choose from four separate itineraries with five different departure dates to start.

The addition of Seabourn’s sailings will help meet the growing demand for luxury travel experiences to Cuba, Seabourn said.

The 11-, 12-, and 14-day sailings will visit five ports in Cuba, calling at three or four on each itinerary.

“For many luxury travelers, they aim to find new places to explore and discover meaningful new cultural opportunities, and Cuba is one of the most sought-after emerging destinations for many of our guests,” said Richard Meadows, president of Seabourn. “We are excited to finally be able to include Cuba in our itineraries, and our guests and travel partners have been anxiously awaiting an ultra-luxury travel experience with a wider selection of destinations in this relatively undiscovered Caribbean treasure. These Cuba itineraries are fresh and sure to satisfy the curiosity of anyone who has considered visiting.”

IP isn’t a perfect proxy for innovation, so there could be IP-related reasons for disproportionate participation in the formal IP system. Financial, cultural, value-based reasons. Or they could be disproportionately innovating in areas of IP that aren’t protectable, like social innovation. They could be denied IP rights at higher rates due to explicit/implicit bias, and there’s some empirical evidence of this in patent. Stereotypical male conception of innovation.There is also a true innovation gap—people from certain groups are innovating at suboptimal levels.

Role of exposure to other inventors/innovators—exposure to such a mentor increases likelihood that person from underrepresented group becomes an inventor.

Psychology literature: Circumstances of poverty bias decisionmaking away from types of thought processes that lead to creative breakthroughs.Effects of past chronic stress on explorative v. exploitative thinking—when people experience the world as harsh and unfair, people stick to what they know rather than exploring new options. Problematic from creativity perspective. Also, dichotomy b/t habit based and goal based decisionmaking. Chronic sleep deprivation, linked to poverty and racial subordination, contributes to habit based decisionmaking, which also hinders creativity. Even if IP system is fair and open, hard to respond to its incentives.

[Woolf’s A Room of Her Own.Time and leisure and space, mental and otherwise, are in short supply when people are overburdened with care work/survival work.]

Jeremy Sheff: Effects of poverty on lived experience of individual poor people: if I don’t make a living, I won’t eat and my kids won’t eat.Don’t need psychology to explain the absence of the capital/time required for innovation.

A: this is additional to the explanations like that one.Chetty study specifically found financial barriers to entry weren’t as important as one might have hypothesized in that if those barriers were absent but there wasn’t a mentor, it didn’t matter as much.[People from poorer backgrounds who can make high incomes often feel pressure to do so to support others/justify the sacrifices made to get them there; perhaps a mentor can direct that in the direction of innovation.]

Sean Pager: note that new innovation/creation from underrepresented groups may fill gaps that need filling, rather than more of the same.Role of incubators set up by interest groups etc.?

Copyright, Andrew Gilden, Copyright’s Market Gibberish

Cases like Nunez and Bond v. Blum reject privacy as something w/in scope of market analysis. Other cases where Ps resist sale for any reason, like Salinger, reason that though Ps don’t want to sell these rights now, they might in the future, so there’s market harm; or they’ve sold similar photos/rights in the past and so have market-based rights now. Cases about political opponents: P isn’t allowed to say there’s market for headshots used by opponent, but Don Henley is allowed to presume a market for political licensing of his songs. Weirdly large body of caselaw about religious disputes: Lerma/Scientology.Worldwide Church of God: P able to stop splinter group from using founder’s highly racist views—no financial interest in the work or interest in selling it, but court hypothesizes there’s still economic value to defeat fair use.

[Yeah, I have the likely pushback. Allowing “value” to mean “nonmonetary value” creates what I call the “Centerfold” problem: I may feel bad that you made a critical, fair use, and the work may now feel contaminated to me, but I don’t believe that the law should weigh that against fair use.]

Dustin Marlan, Unmasking the Right of Publicity

Protecting the internal dimensions of the person is generally considered the role of privacy, not publicity rights. Jerome Frank’s conception was very influential.Now a hydra-like right, merchandising, endorsement, and “impressment.” Similar to intrusion upon seclusion, false light, etc. in terms of privacy categorization, but what caused this bifurcation between economic interests and personhood/privacy interests? What is the persona—“mask”—for publicity rights? Might be based on Franks’ own conception of a self split into the private true self and the public false self which is constructed and commodified.Haelan was the first recognition legally of the persona as an assignable, alienable right independent of the right of privacy.Frank had been psychoanalyzed and recommended it to his colleagues; wrote about psychological concepts of the law in which judges were father-substitutes making the pretense that law was clear and precise.He was a fact-skeptic, believing that uncertainty in judicial process resulted not just from uncertainty in law but uncertainty in judge’s perception of facts—law varies w/judge’s personality.

Consider other concepts of the self that better integrate privacy and publicity: Julie Cohen’s postliberal approach to the problem of selfhood is relevant to both: subjectivity emerges gradually, shaped but not determined by surroundings, situated within relationships, practices and beliefs. Celebrity as a mask that eats into the face (hey, I wrote a thing about that)—may be impossible to distinguish them in the way the law now presumes.

Shyam Balganesh: wonders whether other stuff in Frank’s life was more important than his earlier book—Frank himself was very clear about his academic persona versus his judicial persona.

Copyright, Christopher Yoo, Are Ideas Independent from Expression: Implications of Linguistics and Cognitive Science for Copyright

Sapir-Whorf: language structures our worlds, determines our actions, constrains our thoughts. Steven Pinker believes that we think in mentalese: we have a concept of blue that is independent of the word for blue.Even though Korean treats blue and green the same, Pinker thinks there’s something innate, as does Noam Chomsky who posits a universal grammar and that language/acquisition can be studied out of context.“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is grammatically correct even though it is meaningless—there’s an inherent structure.Another version of language is agglutinative, with verb at end and particles changing the meaning, like Finnish, Hungarian, Korean, Japanese—another major form that just happens to manifest in different parts of the world b/c there are a limited number of ways to structure language.Now: renaissance of interest in Sapir-Whorf—studies of directional languages/thinking.Huge controversy about which way causality runs.Inuits have multiple words for snow, but the number is in dispute and they need them.

Wikipedia and Aboriginal languages: Tasmanian palawa kani is an attempt to synthesize fragments of 12 extinct indiginous languages and promote its use. Wants to set rules on who can use it, claiming under UN Declaration of Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples, not copyright. Raises how shared language can define a community. Wikipedia rejected request for removal.

Other implications: right to speak a particular language; importance of gendered speech.

Pam Samuelson: how would you rule on computer languages developed in order to become “lingua” of that community versus things that are more artistic such as Klingon? What tool do you use? She thinks of language as system with structure & component elements.

A: the way statute is drafted excludes all that. We have a generality problem. He would draw the line at functionality. Similar to transformative use—now w/database cases it’s about making creative works more useful rather than more/differently creative.Tolkien’s Elvish: Kind of like laches—once you let it loose in the world, other people should be able to use.

Justin Hughes: Malaysian/Ba’ahasa was a pidgin/trading language for coastal peoples, built into a language—this seems like a functional purpose.

Betsy Rosenblatt: you talk about genericide; we don’t protect systems b/c we think they’re functional. To the extent that it’s a communication tool, it’s functional even if it is expressive in the origin. So wouldn’t draw a line b/t Klingon and Java b/c they are both building blocks.

A: Coders say code is beautiful but most of them don’t do that in their daily work.Klingon was designed by linguists.

Why are we doing this?

The reason for this post’s existence is to encourage more teams to make the
effort to move their credentials, certificates and other relevant files -
think bbl up to a proper secret store.

Most of us are guilty of taking the easy way out by checking in all our
secrets and certs into a private git repo . And although we install tools
like the cred-alert-cli git
hook
to keep us in check, let us face the reality of our frequent usage of the
--no-verify flag.

Eventually our hasty human nature coupled with --no-verify will lead us
to expensing the costly mistake of leaking credentials into a repo that is
public or may become public in the future - OSS for the win!.

We need to take the stance of not storing any credentials in git.

This post is one of a multi-part post that will be published to help us
deploy, configure and use Vault as part of our workday lives and CI systems.
This will NOT be a post to debate the pros and cons of other tools like
credhub or lpass and how those tools can be used to mitigate this problem.

The Arts and Education Council (A&E), in partnership with EducationPlus, has announced an affiliation with the St. Louis Suburban Music Educators Association (SLSMEA). A&E assumes administrative management of the association, which manages the honors bands and music festival competitions in St. Louis County school districts and some school districts in St. Charles County. The partnership took effect July 1.

"The Arts and Education Council is pleased to announce this partnership with EducationPlus and St. Louis Suburban Music Educators Association. Together, we are committed to offering exciting and meaningful performance and learning opportunities for young musicians," said Cynthia A. Prost, A&E president and CEO.

Retired music educators and clinicians run the honors bands and music festival competitions for middle and high-school students each year. Registration for 2018-2019 band, orchestra and choir honor groups opens in mid-September at slsmea.com.

The following school districts participate in the SLSMEA:

Affton School District

Bayless School District

Brentwood School District

Clayton School District

Ferguson-Florissant School District

Hancock Place School District

Hazelwood School District

Kirkwood School District

Jennings School District

Ladue School District

Lindbergh School District

Maplewood-Richmond Heights School District

Mehlville School District

Normandy School District

Orchard Farm School District

Parkway School District

Pattonville School District

Ritenour School District

Riverview Gardens School District

Rockwood School District

St. Charles School District

University City School District

Valley Park School District

Webster Groves School District

Wentzville School District

The Ripple Effect of the Arts. - The Arts and Education Council (A&E) builds appreciation, participation and support for the arts and arts education throughout the St. Louis community, shaping a more vibrant arts community for all. A&E spreads the ripple effect of the arts across the 16-county, bi-state region by supporting nearly 100 arts organizations through multi-faceted programs, including: Operating and Project Grants; Arts Education Grants for Teachers; Arts Incubation at the Centene Center for the Arts; a Catalyst Innovation Lab; the Katherine Dunham Fellowship; a stARTup Competition for Arts Entrepreneurs; stARTup-StL Crowdfunding Platform; Arts Leadership Management Academy (ALMA); Executive Directors Roundtable; Arts Marketers Professional Development; the Annual St. Louis Arts Awards; and Young Friends of the Arts.

Since its inception in 1963 as the region's only privately-supported united arts fund, the Arts and Education Council has raised and distributed more than $100 million in private funding for the arts - a significant contribution that directly impacts the quality of life in our region. A&E meets all 20 Better Business Bureau Charity Standards and has earned the Wise Giving Seal of Approval, a three-star rating from Charity Navigator and a Guidestar Exchange Silver Participant rating.

About the St. Louis Suburban Music Educators Association - The St. Louis Suburban Music Educators Association is the professional organization for music educators for member school districts of EducationPlus. SLSMEA is affiliated with EducationPlus and MENC: The National Association for Music Education.

SLSMEA sponsors numerous festivals throughout the year which include Large Ensemble Music Festival for Band, Orchestra, and Choir; Solo and Ensemble Music Festival for Band, Orchestra, and Choir; and Honor Group Ensembles for Band, Orchestra, and Choir for high school, middle school, and elementary students.

CARACAS, WILLEMSTAD - Venezuela’s state-run oil company PDVSA has limited the damage from an unprecedented slump in crude exports by transferring oil between tankers at sea and loading vessels in neighboring Cuba to avoid asset seizures. But the OPEC member nation is still fulfilling less than 60 percent of its obligations under supply deals with customers. […]

Grammy-award winning singer Albita Rodriguez is such a celebrated interpreter of Cuban music that when a new version of the opera Carmen was produced set in revolutionary Havana a role was created especially for her.

The Federal Ministry of Science and Technology (FMST) has disbursed a grant of N45 million to deserving inventors and innovators in Nigeria, Dr Mohammed Jubrin has said. Jubrin, who is the Director-General, National Board for Technology Incubation (NBTI), made this known to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Abuja. The director-general said […]

Operation Boot is back. The new American plan for regime change in Iran dawns this week with a re-imposition of economic sanctions against Tehran and the threat of more to come.

American exceptionalism in action as the whole world (minus Trump satrapies) rejects the move putting the EU on a collision course with Washington.

For nearly 50 years economic sanctions have been the default position of western countries seeking to bring others to heel, make them succumb, or in the most extreme circumstances roll over, cry"Uncle Sam"and be"regime changed".

The fact that quarantine - or siege - is an act of war rather than an alternative to war is easily elided with a compliant media.

For most of my life I have struggled to explain that the US embargo on Cuba for example –still more the claimed extra-territoriality of that embargo– as a result of which gigantic US fines are levied on foreign companies doing business with Cuba entirely legally under their own countries’ law. That the embargo on Cuba is lawless brigandry need hardly detain us. Perhaps St. Augustine said it best in his book "The City of God".

Describing an encounter on the high seas between Alexander the Great and a pirate ship, Alexander demands:

"How dare you terrorize these waters as a thief?"

The Pirate captain answers:

"How dare you terrorize the whole world? You with your great Navy, can call yourself an Emperor, and call other men as you please."

I lived up close and personal enough to smell it, the long devastating regime of economic sanctions against Iraq which killed 1.7 million of Iraqis, according to UN figures (not to be confused with the deaths during the invasion and subsequent occupation from 2003).

Among them were many children and I helped put their little white coffins into the baked earth amidst the wailing of their parents on many occasions when I was the only British politician travelling to Iraq.

The monstrous Secretary of State Madeleine Albright - now reborn as a critic of Trump's policy of"separating children from their families"- was in no doubt when she told Lesley Stahl on CBS News of the value of separating Iraqi children from their families forever for political purposes.

When asked about the policy she was implementing on Iraq which (at that time) had killed half a million Iraqi children she replied:

“I think this is a very hard choice. But the price, we think, the price is worth it.”

Neighboring Iran has endured endless twists and turns in western policy. Given that the country grows oil and gas rather than avocados is of course the reason. As Donald Rumsfeld reportedly said, in terms,"It’s not our fault God put America’s oil under other people's countries."

Under the dark reign of the self-declared emperor Pahlavi the Peacock Shah of Persia, Iran was the West's best friend. Indeed Britain and the United States had actually put Pahlavi on his ‘Peacock Throne’ overthrowing the elected premier Mosaddegh in Operation Boot in 1953. The moderate socialist Mosaddegh had made the fatal error of nationalising his own country’s oil, taking it from the big western oil companies. His fate was sealed.

Iran then became a byword for torture and repression until the 1979 overthrow of the whole regime by millions of Iranians on the streets - far too many to shoot.

Iran has been ostracized, invaded, subverted and sanctioned ever since.

The first rays of light in this dark story appeared with the P5+1 Nuclear deal the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran in which Iran undertook to so verifiably limit its nuclear energy industry as to preclude forever the creation of a nuclear bomb (this despite the fact that most of Iran's adversaries in the region and beyond bristle with nuclear weapons or live under the military promise of defense by the nuclear weapons of others.

It was a good deal. But it was negotiated by Barack Obama on the American side and one of President Trump's primordial obsessions is to destroy anything with Obama's signature on it.

But there was a major problem in Trump's determination to wreck the Iran Nuclear Deal. This was a solemn and binding Treaty not between the US and Iran but between Iran the US, Russia, China and the EU.

A major test immediately loomed - would after token protests the European Union tamely bow down to Trump, the bull in the China shop?

Not yet at any rate. Indeed all the signs are that this is the first pan-European revolt against US hegemony, more significant in fact than the refusal of France and Germany to join the Bush and Blair invasion of Iraq.

The EU has enforced its"Blocking Statute"to protect its firms from the latest round of US Sanctions on Iran which came into effect at midnight eastern standard time Tuesday. Even harsher sanctions will be imposed by Trump in November - giving rise to widespread speculation in Iran that the Islamic Republic will preempt it with an "October surprise" rather than go quietly into that goodnight.

The Blocking Statute has never been used by the EU before (though it has existed more than 20 years). It is thus a significant assertion of European rejection of an American policy almost bereft of support outside Israel and Saudi-Arabia.

But it may be more symbolic than real. First, all 27 EU countries will have to incorporate specific rejection of the US sanctions on Iran into their domestic rules. Time consuming, and wide-open to US subversion of the process. There are plenty of US satrapies in the EU. Moreover European companies themselves (as is the case in trade with Cuba) are quite likely to roll-over and cry uncle for fear of losing their markets in the US.

Symbolic or not though it is a further sign of American isolation on foreign policy issues and a further stick for the US Democrats to beat President Trump with in the run-up to the mid-term elections in November. The Democrats prefer war with North Korea and peace with the Islamic Republic of Iran. As the Americans say"Go figure"...

“Ew, that’s disgusting,” said Katrina Wells of Markham, who was waiting for a water taxi to the Toronto Islands when the Star showed her a picture of what was floating in the harbour. “I guess it would be a problem if I fell in the water.”

The Star had joined Toronto-based water-monitoring group Swim Drink Fish as it tested water in the harbour for E. coli contamination.

The results of those tests won’t be back for at least 24 hours, but levels of the bacterium were already more than 100 times greater than the standard for beach water quality of 100 E.coli bacteria per 100 millilitres of water before Tuesday’s storm. After the flash flood, the results were plain to see: condoms, tampons, feminine hygiene pads, syringes and needles amid a floating mass of gunk.

“This is a vital area of the city and we’re just hoping to make the water here swimmable, drinkable and fishable,” said Elise Mackie, community monitoring co-ordinator for the group formerly known as Lake Ontario Waterkeepers.

Some of the debris Thursday came from downtown Toronto’s old plumbing system, which carries household waste and whatever gets swept through storm drains in the same pipes — pipes that overflowed Tuesday. Modern cities, and some of Toronto’s younger suburbs, are outfitted with separate sewer systems which segregate human waste and storm water, a setup which became standard in the 1950s and ’60s.

Ontario released more than eight million cubic metres of untreated sewage and runoff into its waterways in 2016, according to Environment Canada.

“It certainly makes me sad to see it and count it every now and then,” Mackie said.

Mackie and a group of volunteers set out every Tuesday and Thursday mornings to sample locations not already monitored by the city.

The city of Toronto regularly conducts water monitoring at 11 beaches, but it does not do so on at the rest of the waterfront, where people can regularly be seen fishing, boating and surfing.

Toronto Public Health spokesperson Mahesh Patel said waterfront areas such as Humber Bay Park and Harbourfront are not designated as public beaches.

Swim Drink Fish president Mark Mattson said the city’s waterfront has undergone a significant revitalization, and more activities are taking place at the harbour. Separating the sewage from rainwater should be a priority going forward, he insisted.

“The giant dreams are blossoming here, but they’re running into giant mistakes of the past,” he said, noting the city of Kingston recently spent a lot of money separating its sewage system.

“It’s going to take both willingness and imagination of our politicians to fix those mistakes.”

Swim Drink Fish’s goal is to test water quality and E. coli levels. It takes samples into an incubator at an in-house laboratory and gets results a day later.

The group says the findings are often ugly. Since May, 23 samples taken at Bathurst Quay have indicated E. coli levels exceeding recreational water-quality standards, said Mackie.

On Aug. 2, the level at Bathurst Quay was more than 10 times greater than the acceptable standard of 100 E. coli bacteria per 100 millilitres (a little under half a cup) of water, set by the provincial Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change.

On Aug. 7, the day of the storm, results from Marina 4 near Queens Quay and Rees St. registered E. coli levels 249 times greater than the standard, the highest the group has recorded at the location. At Bathurst Quay, E. coli levels were 130 greater than the standard.

When levels of the bacteria exceed the standard, seven out of 2,000 people would get sick from ingesting or swimming in that water, said Mackie.

“Anything from gastrointestinal sickness, skin rash, ear infections,” she explained. “E. coli is just an indicator of bacteria.”

The thought that the water may be contaminated, even on days when it looks clean on the surface, worries Ro Omrow, a scuba diver with Ontario Underwater Explorers.

“We generally just used our eyes to test if the water was clean,” he said about his club diving at the Humber Bay shore. Last year he approached Swim Drink Fish about water testing at their diving place, and he has since been bringing in water samples every week.

When tests shows the E. coli levels exceed the standards, the group still dives, but they take more precautions, such as showering right after diving, Omrow said.

“It would absolutely make a difference if the city did the testing,” he said. “Probably more frequent, and maybe at other diving clubs too.”

Gilbert Ngabo is a breaking news reporter based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @dugilbo

The Context of White Supremacy hosts our debut study session on the autobiography of Assata Shakur. Formerly JoAnne Chesimard, Shakur is a veteran of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, a convicted cop killer, an escaped felon, the first woman ever placed on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist List, and an author. As President Obama has labored to improve relations with Cuba, Shakur's extradition continues to be a pivotal talking point. Her autobiography reveals how her understanding of her Racism evolved and what she should do to solve this problem. The book gives equal time to her account of being imprisoned and shackled for a crime she maintains she did not commit. Listeners should contrast this narrative with our recent study of Minister Malcolm X. INVEST in The COWS - http://tiny.cc/ledjb CALL IN NUMBER: 760.569.7676 CODE 564943# SKYPE: FREECONFERENCECALLHD.7676 CODE 564943# The C.O.W.S. archives: http://tiny.cc/76f6p

The Context of White Supremacy hosts our 2nd study session on the autobiography of Assata Shakur. Formerly JoAnne Chesimard, Shakur was actively involved in the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, convicted of killing New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, an escaped felon, the first woman ever placed on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist List, and a writer. As President Obama labors to improve relations with Cuba, Shakur's extradition has remained a key talking point. Last week's segment began with Shakur recounting being shot, shackled and tortured by cops who bragged about being Racist while calling her nigger. She believed Whites manipulated a black nurse to ask her for information while she was in her hospital bed. Shakur remained quiet, codified. She stressed that her black grandparents and demanded #BlackSelfRespect - which nourished her dedication to countering Racism. Poignantly, Assata recalls the warmth and love of her mother telling her that she made her proud. We'll keep an eye out for the influence of Christianity. INVEST in The COWS - http://tiny.cc/ledjb CALL IN NUMBER: 760.569.7676 CODE 564943# SKYPE: FREECONFERENCECALLHD.7676 CODE 564943# The C.O.W.S. archives: http://tiny.cc/76f6p

The Context of White Supremacy hosts the 3rd study session on the autobiography of Assata Shakur. Formerly JoAnne Chesimard, Shakur is a veteran of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, the convicted killer of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, an escaped felon, the first woman ever placed on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist List, and a writer. The diplomatic talks to upgrade the United State's ties with Cuba have prompted speculation about the chance of Shakur's extradition. Last week's installment featured an epic moment of self-reflection when Shakur recalls the verbal abuse black children heaped on each other; adding "Black" to any insult intensified the damage. As a child she was captivated by television and adored Elvis Presley. Later on during her New Jersey confinement, she was isolated from other inmates and denied access to appropriate medical care. Even while incarcerated, Assata models the conduct of a professional counter-racist soldier. She methodically selects the best course of action for her given circumstances. At times she's silent. At times she's counter-violent. Keep an eye out for the influence of Christianity. INVEST in The COWS - http://tiny.cc/ledjb CALL IN NUMBER: 760.569.7676 CODE 564943# SKYPE: FREECONFERENCECALLHD.7676 CODE 564943# The C.O.W.S. archives: http://tiny.cc/76f6p

The Context of White Supremacy hosts our 5th study session on the autobiography of Assata Shakur. Formerly JoAnne Chesimard, Shakur was a dedicated member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, convicted of killing New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, an escaped felon, the first woman placed on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist List, and an author. She continues to inspire White angst as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie recently chided Pres. Obama's policy on Cuba: "The condition for which Cuba is able to join the rest of the civilized world must rest on the country's commitment to hand over every terrorist currently being harbored, starting with Joanne Chesimard." Last week's installment described Assata's pregnancy behind bars and the coordinated effort to deny her proper medical care. White prison officials intentionally aggravated her and verbalized their wishes for the child's death. Assata's aunt and attorney helped her gain access to a competent, caring black physician - who was also subjected to Racism. Keep an eye out for the influence of Christianity. INVEST in The COWS - http://tiny.cc/ledjb CALL IN NUMBER: 760.569.7676 CODE 564943# SKYPE: FREECONFERENCECALLHD.7676 CODE 564943# The C.O.W.S. archives: http://tiny.cc/76f6p

The Context of White Supremacy hosts the weekly Compensatory Call-In. We encourage non-white listeners to dial in with their codified concepts, new terms, observations, research findings, workplace problems or triumphs, and/or suggestions on how best to Replace White Supremacy With Justice ASAP. We'll use these sessions to hone our use of words as tools to reveal truth, neutralize White people. We'll examine news reports from the past seven days and - hopefully - promote a constructive dialog. #ANTIBLACKNESS After the death of Cuban leader and international icon Fidel Castro, pundits and heads of state have devoted a week to dissecting Castro's life and times. President-elect Donald Trump labeled Castro a "brutal dictator," while Soledad O'Brien recounted her Cuban mother's memories of Castro's callous and vindictive rule. Jesse Jackson Sr. and Mumia Abu-Jamal recalled Castro's military support of the anti-apartheid effort in South Africa, offer of medical aid during Hurricane Katrina, the safe haven provided to former Black Panther Assata Shakur, and his rendezvous with Minister Malcolm X during his 1960 visit to the United States. Calls to scold the deceased Cuban leader for his acts of brutality seem particularly ironic on this week, when Mecklenburg District Attorney Andrew Murray announced that no charges would be filed for the killing of Keith Lamont Scott. Murray used the occasion to reprimand reckless negro use of social media. Simultaneously and further south, the Walter Scott murder trial is being deliberated by the jury. South Carolina police officer Michael Slager waits to see if he too will be exonerated for extinguishing a black life. Fellow South Carolinian Dylann Storm Roof will represent himself in his death penalty case for the 2015 terrorist attack on Mother Emanuel AME. #AnswersForMiriamCarey INVEST in The COWS - http://paypal.me/GusTRenegade CALL IN NUMBER: 641.715.3640 CODE 564943# The C.O.W.S. archives: http://tiny.cc/76f6p

Yasser Castellanos, an independent Cuban artist and illustrator for Havana Times, received an official citation from State Security signed by a certain Lieutenant Pablo. He is expected at the Cuba and Chacon, Old Havana station on Friday, August 10, at 2 p.m. The stated reason: interview.

On this week's #PowerWomen feature, social entrepreneurs Hlubi Mboya Arnold and the Founding Director and CEO of Riversands Incubation Hub, Jenny Retief, discuss the impact measurement of fostering high potential, black-owned businesses, adding value to the township of Diepsloot, strategies for growing the economy, and restoring dignity to the thousands of currently unemployed.
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[Argentina], August 9 (ANI): Argentina's Senate on Thursday rejected a proposed bill on legalising elective abortion in the country.

The bill would have allowed women to terminate their pregnancy in the first 14 weeks. According to current Argentine laws, abortions can be carried out only when the mother's health is at risk or in rape cases, CNN reported.

The Senate voted against the bill, 38 to 31, with two abstentions and one absentee. As the outcome of the vote was announced, demonstrators got engaged in clashes with the police outside the National Congress building in Buenos Aires.

In June, Argentine Chamber of Deputies or the lower house of Congress narrowly passed the bill 129 to 125 with one abstention.

The proposed abortion bill, which was a raging issue in Argentina in the past few months, saw protestors, both in favour and against abortion taking to the streets. While the anti-abortion demonstrators protested under blue coloured "save both lives" banners, pro-abortion protestors flashed banners and wore green bandanas, loosely wrapped and tied around their necks, as per the CNN report.

Most Latin American countries permit abortions for medical reasons. There is a blanket ban on abortion in many countries such as Chile, Suriname, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, Sputnik reported.

In Mexico, abortion is legal only in the nation's capital Mexico City. The voluntary termination of pregnancy is legal only in Cuba, Uruguay, Guyana and Puerto Rico. (ANI)

Who’s diving into the Shark Tank this season? Recently, ABC announced the guest judges for the TV show’s upcoming 10th season. The hit series “features entrepreneurs seeking investments from a group of savvy, wealthy investors who are “self-made” tycoons. These regular “sharks” are Robert Herjavec, Kevin O’Leary, Barbara Corcoran, Daymond John, Mark Cuban, and Lori Greiner.” […]

H.P. Albarelli, Jr.’s journey into the strange quirks and oddities he had discovered about the many people somehow associated with the assassination of President John Kennedy on November 22, 1963 is referred to as “high strangeness and synchronicity.” Michael Petro referred to it as “curious scraps of information.” Indeed, the numerous references to the many faces somehow connected to Kennedy (Lee Oswald, the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA], the Mob, the Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], and others) were often a bog of facts and comments, though tantalizing and dramatic, still seemed to be a jungle of confusing loose ends.

The early part of the book was an attempt in tracing the dawn of psychiatry in the 1940s and 1950s leading to Intelligence Programs such as the CIA’s top-secret Projects MK/Naomi, MK/Ultra, and Project Artichoke.

“The CIA and the military, which were quickly drawn to the Program,” said Abarelli, “were becoming intrigued with the possibilities of creating what were then referred to as ‘aggressive soldiers’ and now are called ‘super soldiers.’”

Albarelli outlined a number of covert Intelligence Programs that could have been bedrock for “Manchurian Candidate” experiments of young children and the populace in general. Fort Detrick’s Special Operations (SO) Division is mentioned, the Office of Strategic Operations (OSS), agent George Hunter White, and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN).

The author suspected that Oswald could likely have been an early victim of such programs while at a detention center called Youth House. Oswald could have possibly entered into a psychotronic relationship with psychiatrists and covert operations. Doctor Milton Kurian and Dr. Renatus Hartogs were psychiatrists that connected with Oswald at Youth House. Hartogs had previously worked at the Allen Memorial Institute, Montreal, Canada, where Doctor D. Ewen Cameron, in the mid-1950s under a covert MK/Ultra contract with the CIA, “conducted a series of horrific drug and sensory deprivation experiments on unwitting patients.”

MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE

LaurEnce HarvEy, in film, foreshadows LEE Harvey a whole year before the JFK Assassination

*******

New York Post reporter Joseph Wershba questioned Dr. Hartogs on December 14, 1967 as to whether or not Oswald could have been a "Manchurian Candidate" (referring to a 1962 film on controlled soldiers).

Although his log seemed to dismiss such an allegation, Hartogs moved in circles of covert ML/Ultra and MK/Naomi and the “drug parties” of Dr. Harold A. Abramson.

Dr. Hartogs was an “aficionado” of magic and a covert contractor for the CIA. He was acquainted with magician John Mulholland who wrote a manual for CIA operatives containing instructions on how to “surreptitiously dose unwitting people with drugs, and how to perform other feats of slight-of-hand.” The Hartogs/Freeman book, The Two Assassins, told of Oswald’s comments to his mother Marguerite concerning his return from Russia: “Mother, not even Marina knows why I returned.”

Dr. Hartogs’s sexual scandal with his patient Julie Roy seemed to coincide with the sexual scandal of Canadian psychiatrist Dr. James Tyhurst. Tyhurst associated with neuropsychologist Dr. Donald O. Hebb and “both attended a seminal 1951 meeting,” said Abarelli, “which included participants from the CIA – to discuss early advancements in sensory deprivation and brainwashing.”

Kline also disclosed that Hartogs, along with Dr. Sidney Malitz (a psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute [NYSPI]) and Dr. Paul Hoch (NYSPI research director) were involved in a number of covert contracts with the CIA and the U.S Army “to perform experiments with psychosurgery, electroconvulsive therapy, LSD, mescaline, and other drugs.” Hartogs worked with Malitz on some of these experiments. Dr. Malitz worked with Fort Detrick’s Special Operations Division. These experiments were with unwitting patients, “children and teenagers.” Harold Blauer died because of such experiments. The CIA selected a group of 100 patients to join in these episodes (p.35). Lee Harvey Oswald was absent from school for at least 50 days while in New York City.

ALLEN DULLES

In the early 1950s,hypnotist George Estabrook wrote to CIA director Allen Dulles about the merits of hypnosisin covert operations.

“The CIA, U.S Army Fort Detrick, the Edgewood Arsenal, and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) funded many of these contracts. Chief among these physicians were: Drs. Bernard Withens, Harold Esecover, and Harold A. Abramson.”

Dr. Lauretta Bender, a child neuropsychistrist at the New York City Bellevue Hospital, experimented extensively on children using electroshock treatment, “DE patterning” and “annihilation.” Also involved was Dr. D. Ewen Cameron, who would eventually head the MK/Ultra subproject 68.

Dr. Leon Eisenberg spoke of Bender’s patients in these experiments as “…psychotic and perhaps worse off than before the treatment.”

H.P. Albarelli Jr. (photo on the left) is a writer and investigative journalist who lives in Vermont, Florida, and London (U.K.). He has written numerous feature articles about the 9-11 anthrax attacks; biological warfare; the American intelligence community; the death of Frank Olson; the Cuban revolution; and social and political affairs. Some of his work can be found at the World Net Daily, Cuba net, Counterpunch, and Crime Magazine websites, as well as in numerous magazines and newspapers.

Allbarelli ventured through several interesting episodes that the reader would best explore. One such incident concerned Marguerite Oswald’s interview by Davis Eugene Boster, a life-long Foreign Service officer and covert CIA operative within the State Department. At one point, he was a staff assistant to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

The interview also included State Department employees Denman F. Stanfield and Edward J. Hickey. Part of the conversation went:

Marguerite: “Now I know you are not going to answer me gentlemen, but I am under the impression that my son is an agent.”

Boster: “Do you mean a Russian agent?”

Marguerite: “No, working for our Government, a U.S agent.”

Marguerite also explained to the Warren Commission:

“And this is the way I think, because I happen to know all of the other things that you don’t know

- the life and everything … And I can almost back it up with things…

Yes, sir, I think my son was an agent. I certainly do.” (p. 64.)

Lee Oswald, from 1957 to1958,was stationed at Atsugi Naval Air Base, Japan, a huge underground 50-acre CIA-USAF Air Base, conducting air traffic control for U-2s flying over Chna an the Soviet Union, at a time when Operation Artichoke physicians and technicians conducted “enhanced interrogations” <torture> at the base.

Khigh Dhiegh

North Korean a psychotronic hypnotist in The Manchurian Candidate

*******

MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS OF MEANING

Albarelli told of Oswald’s appearances at East Louisiana State Hospital ...

He also went through episodes involving psychiatrists Dr. Robert G. Heath, Dr. Frank Silva and Dr. Alfred T. Butterworth and their contributions to psychotronics. Albarelli told about the further mysterious workings of Archcha Smith, David Ferrie, Ferrie’s Civilian Air Patrol (CAP), detective Jack S. Martin, CIA operative June Cobb, and a mysterious Rose Cherami who also had been a patient at the East Louisiana State Hospital in 1961.

“The Oswald sighting at the East Louisiana State Hospital seems cut and dry, but as with most events concerning Oswald,” said Albarelli, “the facts surrounding dwell in another realm of ambiguity and interconnectedness, an alternate universe clouded by high strangeness where everything has multidimensions of meaning and truth.”

Rose Cheramie foretold the assassinatio of JFK to doctors

at East Louisana State Hospital

ROSE CHERAMIE

Albarelli had an interesting chapter on Rose Cherami (Melba Christine Marcades), mystery woman, hooker, and drug addict, who was committed to the East Louisiana State Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi following an auto accident on Highway 190. The state hospital was infamous in the annuals of the Kennedy assassination. Rose Cherami seemed to have been housed in several CIA-infiltrated facilities over the years.

Louisiana detective Lt. Francis Paul Fruge investigated Cheramie the day before the Kennedy assassination. While in the hospital, Cherami told Dr. Don Bowersthat Kennedy was going to be murdered in Dallas.

Cheramie had once worked for Jack Ruby in Dallas as a stripper and “drug courier.” She said he had seen Oswald with Ruby. She also contended that Ruby was involved in the planned assassination. Rose Cheramie died from another auto accident on September 4, 1965.

Dallas police were not interested in Cheramie’s testimony (p. 97), but Rose had quite a bit to say about drug trafficking in Texas.

Albarelli continued into her career that connected “to yet another unsolved murder – that of Houston police detective Martin A. Billnitzer – and therefor to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, George Hunter White, and the CIA…”

“Billnitzer apparently committed suicide (shot himself twice) in his office the morning after being interviewed (by police investigators)…” (p. 115.) “…drugs put back on the street through the back door of the Houston Police Department but Billnitzer expanded his chief objective was to get these drugs off the streets permanently…” (p. 103.)

David Ramirez Morales

A KALEIDIOSCOPE OF FACES ...

The book was filled with bits, pieces and history of Intelligence operations and spies galore: A kaleidoscope of faces and bodies merged into each other as mingled smoke from the lanterns of crime:

A second plot was discovered during President Kennedy’s trip to Miami on November 18, involving an attempt “From an office building with a high-powered rifle.” The attempt was discovered on November 9, connecting Willie Somerset and right-wing extremist Joseph Milteer.

Early events of the 1960s “foreshadowed” the evil to come. “During the 1950s, an estimated three thousand salaried and contract CIA employees were engaged in propaganda efforts. One of the biggest initial supporters was Philip L. Graham, publisher and owner ofthe Washington Post.” At the end of June, 1963, Phil Graham was dead from a small-bore shotgun wound to the head.

Photo-analytic-expert and chief assistant, Dino Brugioni, of the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in Washington investigated the famous Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination.

Dino Brugioni discovered “a second, ultra-classified Zapruder film event” in which a “lone Secret Service agent showed up at the NPIC” with a “different” Zapruder film; other employees were sworn to secrecy and no codename attached. “I was sworn to secrecy and it could not be divulged,” said Brugioni.

EIGHT SHOTS

NPIC photo experts Dino Brugioni and Homer Mahon, in a 1997 interview at the Assassination Records Review Board (AARB), were “blunt…staggering”: (as to how many shots were fired) “About eight shots...three different directions, at least…”

UNDISGUISED CONTEMPT

Mary Meyer held an undisguised contempt for the C IA, including a “loathing” of Allen Dulles and spymaster Jim Angleton. Former CIA contract operative Robert D. Morrow quoted his CIA boss, Marshall Diggs:

“There is a very prominent lady here in Washington who knows too much about the Company, its Cuban Operations, and more specifically about the president’s assassination.”

In a startling conversation between Bernie Yoh and James Angleton in 1980 (Yoh ran Accuracy in Media: a mouth piece for extreme right-wing views) that he had captured Mary Meyer’s private diary. “It’s her diary” Angleton said, and he gave a copy to Yoh (Bernie Yoh in a telephone interview by Leo Damore in October 30, 1990).

“That woman that was killed in Georgetown,” Angleton said, “I took care of everything.”

William L. Mitchell, a former member of the Army Special Forces kill team as a domestic component for the CIA and the National Security Agency, took orders from the CIA’s Domestic K Office (Mitchell’s residence at 1500 Arlington Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia was a CIA safe house); Mitchell confessed that in September 1964, he became part of a “surveillance team” that was monitoring Mary Meyer.

(Transcription of tape-recorded telephone conversation between Robert Crowley and Gregory Douglas, January 27, 1996.)

CONTROL OF EVERYTHING

Janney goes into great detail on how the CIA operation took place on the day of Mary Meyer’s murder, utilizing decoys, camouflage, radios, and a “highly trained assassin.”

“The answer, of course, was that the CIA operation was in control of everything. Once Crump had become the designated patsy, the team knew where he was,” says Janney, “and what he was doing at all times, and especially what he was wearing. They had gone to great lengths to duplicate his clothing for the man standing over the body, who was to be seen by Wiggins.”

Janney reveals that the telephone call that Mary’s brother-in-law, Ben Bradlee, received on the day of Mary’s murder was not just a “CIA friend,” but was in fact Wistar Janney, an employee of different directories in the Agency during the 1950s and 1060s (including the Office of Current Intelligence [OCI]). Bradlee recalled getting the call about 2:00 p.m. or 2:30 p.m. That also was the time the corner had arrived at the murder scene.

“Was it possible that his call to Ben Bradlee ‘just after lunch’ was designed not only to notify him of the event,” says Janney, “but begin the final piece of the ‘operation’---establish the identity of the murder victim?”

CRITICS’ NEVER-ENDING ATTACKS

Jacob G. Hornberger, president of the Future of Freedom Foundation, took issue with writer Nina Burleigh’s review of Janney’s research into Mary Meyer. Burleigh published a critical review of Janney’s book at The Daily Beast in which she insinuated that the alleged killer Raymond Crump did kill Mary Meyer and that the assassin William Mitchell was not involved (A Very Private Woman, 1998). Burleigh criticized Leo Damore’s telephone conversation with Mitchell as nothing but “hearsay on hearsay and Damore isn’t alive to relate the details of his purported telephone conversation.”

But what I found fascinating, “ said Hornberger, “is that Burleigh failed to confront the other half of the problem: even if Mitchell wasn’t the assassin, there is still the problem of his possibly having been a fake witness who provided manufactured and perjured testimony in a federal criminal proceeding.”

Hornberger was suspicious of Burleigh’s failing to address William Mitchell by name, and he researched her book to possibly find out why. It was apparent that Burleigh simply referred to Mitchell as “the jogger” and did not mention his name. The other witness, Henry Wiggins Jr, is mentioned, however; why the distraction away from Mitchell?

“We should keep in mind that a criminal-justice system depends on the integrity of the process,” said Hornberger. “If one side or the other feels free to use fake witnesses and perjured testimony with impunity, knowing that no one within the government will ever investigate or prosecute it, then the entire criminal-justice system becomes worthless or, even worse, tyrannical.”

(Steve Erdmann continued to be suspicious of the many convenient deaths or disappearances of witnesses of varying degree and substance.)

Likewise, Janney-critic, Jim DiEugenio said that the book was full of errors and exaggerated investigation, often relying on less than credible testimony (in Janney’s favor, however, these DiEugenio remarksmake one tend to thoughtfully ask: what was the history of the CIA Operation Mockingbird? [SE]):

“After long and careful textual and source analysis, what does this book rely on to advance its theses? It relies on people like Damore and Truitt who…simply were not reliable in the state they were in. It relies on a chimerical ‘diary’ that does not exist, and which the best evidence says was really a sketchbook. It relies on so-called CIA documents that are demonstrative fakes originating from a proven forger. It relies on a man like Leary whose story only surfaced 21 years later after he had somehow missed 25 opportunities to tell it.

“Like a contemporary Procrustes, the author then distorts the major characters to fit into his agenda. If one recalls from Greek mythology, Procrustes was a bandit from Attica who would abduct people and then either stretch them or crush them to make them fit into an iron bed. This book stretches Mary Meyer beyond recognition, and crushes JFK beyond recognition. It elongates Crump and then crushes Mitchell to fit into that iron bed. The combination of its dubious information plus the distorted character portraits makes the volume look less like a book than a 17th century phantasmorgia.”

DiEugenio (unfortunately) alleged that in an earlier version of the book, Janney was possibly also including in Kennedy’s visions for the future, secrets about UFOs and extraterrestrial beings (though, in Steve Erdmann’s purview, this would not have been that totally unsustainable), and even extending testimony from further unreliable sources, such as “serial fabricator.”

(Author and researcher Seamus Coogan went through a ‘thunder jug’ series [a confusing kaleidoscope of intrigue and UFO events] of mysterious mentions and possible hoaxes of CIA, military intelligence personnel, findings by UFO researchers--such as Mark Pilkington and scientists such as the late chemical engineer Dr. Leon Davidson--who have, as yet [along with many other serious researchers], no real top or bottom to their findings. Speaking characteristically of the first famous ‘flying saucer’ report of Kenneth Arnold:

“Thus it wasn’t just many designs that had been tested, but technologies like radio control that were still relatively unknown to the post war public that had been explored for decades before the Arnold sightings on June the 24th, 1947. This started the modern day UFO phenomena. Whether the objects he saw that day were an alien entity, an infamous Vought ‘flying flap jack’ XF5U or a VI73, as Pilkington and Davidson say Arnold saw, some variation of the Northrop or a captured German Horten HO IX model, a prototype glider, or a UAV. All this is open to debate.”)

The ending of the book is Janney’s description of the CIA culture as seen in and through the world of “multinational corporations,” including beginnings in the CIA’s Operation Paper-clip (and also “Operation zipper” pertaining to Kennedy’s murder [as written by CIA assistant deputy director Robert T. Crowley]). As Crowley told author Gregory Douglas: “…she made the mistake of running her mouth…she was threatening to talk."

Wistar Janney was an “ideal go-between, someone who could contact, signal, or coordinate, among all three men: Angleton, Brad Lee, and Cord Meyer,” according to Peter Janney.

WINDOW-DRESSING

Peter Janney came to know these CIA men as living “in a world that answered to no authority” which mocked the lobby slogan and motto at Langley: “Ye shall know the truth and it shall set you free.”

“But it was nothing more than window-dressing, camouflage for ‘the ends justify the means’---the CIA’s true, unwritten code for dealing with anything, or anyone, that happened to inconveniently get in its way. And so it would be with Mary Pinchot Meyer.”

“Perhaps the most chilling aspect of this mesmerizing book is the detailed and convincing manner in which it reveals the suffocating power of the official JFK assassination cover-up imposed by the U.S. government immediately after his death - the power to manipulate the media and to steal documents; the willingness to manipulate the judicial system by aggressively attempting to frame an innocent man for a crime he did not commit; and even the willingness to commit murder to silence one brave and respected citizen who was about to publicly oppose the sham conclusions of the Warren Report. Mary Meyer paid for her bravery - and her loyalty - with her life, but Peter Janney has rewarded her courage by publicly revealing, for the first time, the true and complete story of her relationship with President Kennedy during the fateful final year of his life." (Douglas P. Horne, Chief Analyst for Military Records, The Assassination Records Review Board [ARRB] and author of Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK., Vols. I-V.

“After Dallas, amid utter horror and shock, Mary had taken it upon herself to discover and make sense of the truth of the conspiracy that had taken place---only to realize the magnitude of the second conspiracy, a cover-up taking place right before her eyes,” continues Janney. “There, in her diary, she had reached an understanding---not only of the evil that had taken place in Dallas, but of the villainous darkness that was enveloping of America.”

On a chilly October 12, 1964 Monday morning, Mary Pinchot Meyer, a high-society socialite, (and also discovered paramour of the late assassinated President John F. Kennedy) became an assassination victim herself during her customary early morning walk to her art studio.

Author Peter Janney knew the Meyer family personally, as Janney’s father, Wistar Janney, was a career CIA operative and close friends with CIA chieftains Richard Helms, James Angleton, and Cord Meyer (Mary’s husband).

“There was nothing pretty or easy about waking up early one morning in 2006 and finally realizing that my own father---Wistar Janney, a career high-level CIA officer---had been involved in the ‘termination’ of Mary Pinchot Meyer, someone I had grown to love and care about,” says Peter Janney. “Yet there is another horror in the death of Mary Meyer, a horror that reaches far beyond the personal. It is the intimate and undeniable connection between her murder and that of her lover, President John F. Kennedy, on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.”

Janney begins an excursion through the arrest and trial of a young twenty-five-year-old Raymond Crump, Jr., the accused murderer of Mary Meyer. Under the skillful counsel of defense attorney Dovey Roundtree, Crump’s attorney was able to disintegrate the accusations and charges brought against her client. Despite prosecution’s determined “declaration of war” on Ray Crump, Roundtree meticulously dodged and rebuffed the prosecution’s manipulations of justice. On Friday, July 30, 1965, the jury found Raymond Crump, Jr., not guilty of the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer. Yet, Roundtree had discovered a deeper mystery in the forensic history.

Janney explains: “Dovey Roundtree never abandoned her belief that Ray had been a scapegoat, a ‘patsy,’ who had been set up to take the fall. ‘So far as I am concerned,’ wrote Roundtree in 2009, ‘there is in the complex and tangled web of certain truth and unconfirmed rumor, of the inference and speculation and intrigue that surrounds the life and death of Mary Pinchot Meyer a single critical fact: Raymond Crump’s innocence in her murder.’”

Joseph W. Shimon floated in the highest of government circles. He was a special White House Aide, Washington Police Inspector, liaison to the CIA, U.S Attorney’s office, U.S Secret Service, the Mob, and an official assassin:

“People are eliminated,” said Shimon to his daughter in the spring of 1965. “Honey, you don’t know how many people are just eliminated, just on the operating table alone. They just need to be disposed of. And don’t ever believe what you read in the newspapers. It’s all made up…among my many jobs, I used to kill people. The government hired me to kill people. It’s a job…you have to, if that’s what you’re told to do.” (Shimon, interviewed by Peter Janney, February 15, 2007.)

Roundtree further pondered the mysterious phone calls she received, the disappearance of a stalled Nash Rambler and an accompanying “repair order,” as well as the mention of “Mary’s diary having been sequestered by the CIA all these years,” linking Mary’s affair with the assassinated president.

“Who, then, was the man that Henry Wiggins had seen standing over Mary’s corpse less than fifteen seconds after the fatal second shot was fired?” asks Janney. “His pristine, unstained clothes appeared to match the clothes worn by Ray Crump that morning.”

NEW LEVEL OF UNDERSTANDING

Janney says that achieving a “new level of understanding in the case” would include a look at “a number of heretofore unseen details, events, experiences, and people.” (p. 144.)

Author Peter Janney

“Another author, Leo Damore, met with Janney in 1992 while working on his own Meyer project. Damore had written a bestseller about Senator Edward Kennedy and Chappaquiddick, and he was hot on the trail of Meyer’s killer, or so he confided to Janney. Damore never finished his book, however. In 1995 he committed suicide. Years later, Janney bought Damore’s research files, using them as the basis for ‘Mary’s Mosaic.’

“James H. Smith, a Falmouth lawyer, was among those encouraging Janney to keep digging. Smith worked for the Kennedy family years ago and knew Damore well. Now 82, he never believed the Warren Commission’s version of JFK’s murder, says Smith today, and finds nothing outlandish in Janney’s the-CIA-did-it scenario.

Mary had several suitors before her death. One such admirer was Robert (“Bob”) L. Schwartz who was a young naval officer and a journalist who came to know Mary as a very idealistic woman and a pacifist, but ultimately called her “a prima ballerina assoluta.” “She was what women were meant to be,” said Schwartz.

Cord Meyer, “a charismatic war veteran,” Yale graduate, congressman, dated and eventually married Mary Pinchot. Cord decided to work for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Directorate of Plans in 1951, “the CIA’s most secretarial division dedicated to the manipulation of world order.”

Janney says: “Somewhere in the bowels of the Washington E Street offices of the newly formed CIA, Cord Meyer transformed all his poetic, insightful visionary wisdom into perfecting schemes and strategies for America’s greater power and control, the often subtle but effective attempts at world domination---no matter what the cost.”

Mary felt a disdain for the CIA and its “mission.” Janney quotes an anonymous source: “Mary absolutely detested Allen Dulles and everything he stood for. She compared him to Machiavelli, only worse.” (p. 184.)

Cord and Mary grew apart, possibly due to Cord’s alcoholism, possibly due to Cord’s obsessive life in the CIA, but also due to Mary’s affair with (in his appearance only) “Italian noble” Jean Pierre. The Meyers were divorced. Shortly following these events, Michael Pinchot Meyer (the son) was hit and killed by an automobile driver. During these sordid circumstances, Cord became director of the CIA’s black project: Operation Mockingbird.

“Having infiltrated more than twenty-five newspapers and wire agencies, Operation Mockingbird had successfully manipulated the American media to promote the CIA viewpoint…an estimated three thousand salaried and contract CIA employees were engaged in propaganda efforts.”

October 12, 1964 - Mary Pinchot Meyer is murdered in broad daylight on the C & O Canal towpath in Georgetown, three weeks after the release of the Warren Report.

The CIA did not take kindly to an expose’ of their media control operation in RampartsMagazine. “CIA operative Edgar Applewhite was ordered to operate a campaign to smear the publication and then tender it financially bankrupt,” says Janney. (p. 192.)

Further CIA conquests included the CIA surveillance of Alfred McCoy’s The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. The book revealed that American intelligence had collaborated with the drug trade dating back as far as World War II. CIA involvement extended about the globe resulting in the “death squads” in Central America (p. 195). Janney talks about a “CIA-led assassination campaign throughout Southeast Asia, Operation Phoenix, (which) made matters even worse.”

Mary’s friends Anne and Jim Truitt began an interest in psychedelic states of consciousness and, according to Jim Truitt, Mary first experimented with psychedelics in 1958, but Janney says a legendary Alfred M. Hubbard (a former World War II OSS agents, uranium entrepreneur) “first introduced her to such exploration.” Dr. Oscar Janiger, a Los Angeles Psychiatrist, was also a member to Hubbard’s visits. Hubbard was very distrustful of the CIA’s exploration of LSD. “The CIA work stinks,” said Hubbard, “they were misusing it…when they were killing people, you couldn’t tell them a goddamn thing.”

Janney says: “In addition to the CIA, the U.S Army, and Britain’s M16 all had a keen interest in using LSD and other hallucinogens for chemical warfare, in what they hoped would be ‘mind control.’” In one incident, in 1951, the CIA’s Fort Detrick, Maryland had used a crop-duster airplane to cover the town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in Southern France with an aerosol of LSD. “Four people committed suicide before the trauma subsided.”

Frank Olson, a CIA chemical warfare expert, became, in the eyes of his peers, a “security risk” and was supposedly thrown out of his tenth-floor hotel window. It was in his world of high-society intrigue, that Mary’s drug interest expanded.

It was suspected that Mary visited Timothy Leary, the LSD guru, during the early 1960s. That interest would become entwined with her friendship with Jack Kennedy.

JACK KENNEDY AND MARY MEYER

Mary became Friends with her neighbor Jack Kennedy starting somewhere about 1957. Over a number of years, that friendship turned into a closer attraction.

“Mary’s primary attraction for Jack may have ultimately been trust---in the end,” says Janney, “love’s most powerful aphrodisiac."

Richard Helms: The man who kept the JFK secrets

Mary contacted Doctor Timothy Leary about his research and connection to the Harvard Psilocybin Project. “Leary depicted Mary Meyer,” says Janney, “as a kind of missionary for the ascension of world peace through the sagacious use of hallucinogens…an opportune mind-altering experience in the lives of powerful political figures, specifically the leader of the free world…”

Leary’s harassment by the government and his eventual arrest and imprisonment only temporarily stifled his investigation of the murder of his Friend, Mary Meyer.

“Upon his release from prison in 1976, having read the National Enquirer expose’ about Mary’s affair with Jack published earlier that year, Leary would attempt a second investigation of Mary’s murder,” says Janney, “after coming across a copy of Deborah Davis’ book Katharine theGreat at the home of his friends Jon and Carolyn Bradshaw.”

EVOLVING TRAJECTORY

According to Janney, the Meyer-Kennedy affair began around January, 1962 and perhaps earlier. Both Meyer and the Kennedys, Jack and Bobby, had a growing distrust of Allen Dulles and his increasing exploits, including the Cuban Bay of Pigs, Operation Northwoods, and other nefarious CIA shenanigans.

“Mary’s longtime commitment to world peace, coupled with Jack’s broadening insight that peace, not armed conflict,” says Janney, “was the right path forward, inevitably made an important asset. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the President’s evolving political trajectory would increasingly isolate him from his own National Security Apparatus.”

During the Cuban missile crisis, both the U.S military and the CIA, says Janney, were secretly operating unilaterally doing whatever they could to intensify tensions that could ignite a war.

“But in the shadows, evil was very much alive, stalking not only the republic but the president,” says Janney. “Not only were the Joint Chiefs of Staff enraged that Cuba had been attacked, but were also indignant that Kennedy had made concessions to Khrushchev.”

Author and researcher Leo Damor told Janney about a confidential source who revealed that Mary and Jack Kennedy had taken “a mild LSD trip” in the summer of 1959. Following this episode, Kennedy pushed for a Nuclear Arms Treaty.

SECURITY OF THE SLAVE

Mary Meyer and Jack Kennedy’s new found philosophy of world peace could be seen in his address at American University, dubbed his “peace speech”: “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, that kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children---not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”

THE OSWALD SYNCHRONISM

An assassination attempt on Jack Kennedy was planned for November 2, 1963. The plot would entail multiple gunmen, and a designated patsy, ex-marine Thomas Arthur Vallee. Like Oswald, Thomas Vallee had also served at a U-2 base in Japan under the Joint Technical Advisory Group (JTAG), the CIA’s code name for its U-2 spy plane surveillance unit. Like Lee Harvey Oswald, Vallee “found work” in the fall of November, 1963 in a building next to a L-shaped turn on the route of the Presidential motorcade. The plot, however, was foiled.

“The entire complex plan to blame Oswald for a crime that he did not commit, a crime that had even taken place when the CIA began to lay a trail that would inexorably lead to an innocent man, involved cables to Mexican police authorities, instructions from the CIA to its Mexico City assets, in the police department there to arrest and silence witness at the Cuban embassy, a citizen of Mexico, who would not accept the false CIA legend and subsequently the use of demagoguery to present a false legend to the Warren Commission as fact. Each action by the CIA, including its destruction of its own files when an inquiry began, is a building block in the case against the CIA for its part in the assassination.”(Mark Lane, LastWord, p. 285.)

Click here to enlarge top photo. - The former Texas School Book Depository building, left, now known as the Sixth Floor Museum, overlooks Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

Such is a nutshell-review of Mark Lane’s conclusion of a lifetime investigation into the reasons and facts behind the November 22, 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Mark Lane is an attorney and also an author of nine books, including Rush toJudgment and Plausible Denial.

Lane painstakingly devotes chapters to the analysis of the various scenarios constituting a case against the CIA and its methods to destroy and control the public.

FROM MAUSERS TO CIA ASSETS

In a cavalcade of topics, Mark Lane reviews arguments and scenes from the assassination. I will selectively choose only a few, leaving many other portions for the reader’s perusal.

# The Jean Hill testimony about the four to six shots she heard in the Dallas Dealey Plaza: “…shots had come from behind a wooden fence on the grassy knoll.” Arlen Specter, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also author of the infamous “single-bullet-theory,” confronted Jean Hill in about the same way that Specter questioned Anita F. Hill in the Clarence Thomas hearings. “She said that Specter did everything possible to force her to state that she had heard only three shots and that none of them came from the grassy knoll. Jean told me that Specter said that he would release the rumor that she had an extramarital affair and that in the end she would end up looking as if she was crazy, ‘just as Oswald’s mother had.’ She said that he wanted her to accept the conclusions that he had reached before he met her.” Jean Hill added: “He was so mean I could hardly believe it.”

Such temperaments will be seen throughout JFK assassination debates and groups, often not only as a sign of narcissism (and other psychological aberrations), but also possibly a sign of the extent of the CIA psyops and psywar issued by that agency and its infiltration into the media and the lives of Americans.

# The finding of the 7.65 German Mauser on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository building on November22, 1963. Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman made a sworn statement describing the Mauser, including its 4/18 telescopic sight. Lieutenant J.C. Day also examined the weapon. The next day, the Mauser turned into an Italian Manlicher-Carcano 6.5. “I wondered how anyone who had looked at that weapon could have identified it differently.” Says Lane, “The Italian rifle became part of the foundation upon which the government built its case, but as it turns out it, too, became suspect.”

# Lane quotes Tip O’neill, the former speaker of the house, as to how the FBI intimidated him to change his testimony that he heard two shots that came behind the knoll fence. “I told the FBI what I had heard, but they said it couldn’t have happened that way and that I must have been imagining things,” said O’neill, “so I testified the way they wanted me to.”

# Lane outlines interesting facts about witness Acquilla Clemons: Clemons was an eyewitness to the murder of Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit; she said that two men had been involved in the murder, one was “kind of heavy” and the other “was tall and then thin and wore light Khaki trousers and a white shirt.” When shown a picture of Oswald, Miss Clemons said that Oswald was not one of the two men she had seen. Clemons said that one man fired at Tippit, the other waved to his partner and they both “ran from the scene in opposite directions.” Lane said that Clemons’ comments were “corroborated by other witnesses who saw men running from the scene and who stated that Oswald was not one of them.”

Clemons said she had been threatened by two men who said they worked for the Dallas Police Department “and ordered her not to talk.” They wore guns and threatened that if she talked to anyone she “might get hurt” if she talked to the Warren Commission, she “might get killed.”

The Warren Commission dismissed her claims as “speculation and rumor.” The Commission claimed, says Lane, “…such a women did not exist.” Lane testified about Clemons in July, 1964. During September, 1964, Dorothy Kilgallen conducted an additional intervention.

“She was a courageous woman who came forward to tell the truth about what she witnessed,” says Lane, “although her life had been threatened.” (p. 27.)

A METHOD TO SUPPRESS THEM

Lane talks about the life and, later, death of Dorothy Kilgallen, a columnist for the New York Journal-American (Dorothy had been actively investigating the Kennedy assassination and obtained “a copy of Jack Ruby’s testimony, the classified top secret” files); both, Dorothy and Mark Lane, exchanged information on the topic.

Andrew Henderson/The New York Times

The author/editor Lee Israel in her Manhattan apartment: She believed Dorothy Kilgallen was murdered.

“She knew that the FBI had focused its legions upon our work,” says Lane. “She wrote in the Journal-American (that) the FBI ‘might have been more profitably employed in probing the facts of the case rather than how I got them.’ Of course, it was not the facts that the FBI sought – it was instead a method to suppress them.”

Following Dorothy’s interview with Jack Ruby in 1965, she told Florence Smith, and other friends, that she was about to “break the case wide open.” She gave her notes to Smith. On November 18, 1965, Dorothy died; two days later, Florence died of a cerebral hemorrhage. All of the notes could not be located. Researcher Richard Kollmar told Lane “that Dorothy had died because of her efforts to investigate the assassination.” Kollmar refused to talk any further. Unfortunately, in 1971 Kollmar committed suicide. Biographer and Editor Lee Israel examined all her available evidence on Kilgallon. “She concluded that Dorothy had been murdered,” says Lane.

ROY CRAIG

Deputy Sheriff Roger D. Craig’s observations on November 22 proved to be extremely important: 1) He interviewed Arnold Rowland and his wife who saw two men on the sixth floor of the book depository building, one with a rifle and telescopic site. 2) He was about eight feet from Deputy Sheriff Eugene Bloom when the German Mauser was found, followed by Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz doing an official police identification. The CIA’s Top Secret memo still listed the rifle (on November 25, 1963) as a German Mauser and not an Italian-Mannlicher-Carcano; says Lane: “Apparently the interagency coordination was imperfect.”

The Mexican has invested $200 Million Pesos to clean the Cancun´s beaches at all.

Credits : Oscar Cadena

With an investment of 200 million pesos, this Wednesday begins work to install the first barrier in Punta Nizuc, in Cancun, which aims to divert the sargassum into the sea and redirect it with the help of wind and natural marine currents. The objective is to avoid massive coverage of the coastline, and generate greater environmental and economic impacts to the Mexican Caribbean. As before, the sargassum that remains on the shore of the beaches will be manually removed and deposited in places of final disposal. The sargasso will be removed with seven structures that the government of Quintana Roo hired from the Goimar Goimsa Group, and the collection will be carried out through amphibious bands or suction bands, explained to El Universal the titutal of the Secretariat of Ecology and Environment of Quintana Roo (Semaqroo), Alfredo Arellano Guillermo. The first fence will serve as a pilot, the other remaining will be placed later in Tulum, Playa del Carmen, Mahahual and Puerto Morelos. Yesterday, during the private meeting that members of the state cabinet held with hoteliers, and in a second open meeting with social sectors, academics and organized civil society, the project to contain sargassum was announced. They explained that the problem is not going to be solved, because it depends on the currents and the winds, but it can reduce the amount (of sargassum) that reaches the beach. They are plastic barriers, canvas, buoys to float, with a width to the bottom of 50 centimeters, to retain the sargasso & quot ;. Also, the owner of Ecology and Environment clarified that "the type of mesh does not threaten the fauna, which can go under it, without any problem. & Quot; For his part, the coordinator of advisers to the state government, Felipe Ornelas said that the work of collecting on land will be maintained along with the diversion of algae in the sea, to avoid burying sargassum on beaches, under the own sand, otherwise, there would be significant environmental impacts on the ecosystem, for example, it would change the color of the beach, its composition and quality.

We recently reported on the unusual amounts of seaweed or pelagic Sargassum that are washing ashore on beaches throughout the Mexican Caribbean. This is not confined to the state of Quintana Roo, the Caribbean islands and the Gulf coast of the United States, from Texas to Florida, are reporting similar experiences. While it is natural for seaweed to come ashore after storms and for warmer water temperatures in the summer to cause it to breed more quickly (a phenomenon known as a bloom), such large quantities of seaweed are rare.

What is pelagic Sargassum?Two species of pelagic Sargassum are washing ashore, they are also known as Common Gulfweed (Sargassum natans) and Broad-toothed Gulfweed (Sargassum fluitans). Sargassum comes from the Portuguese word sargaço, which means “little grapes,” a reference to the air-filled bladders that enables it to float on the surface and move with the currents. Unlike other algae that are rooted in the seabed or attached to rocks or corals, it can grow and reproduce as it drifts through the water. And when fragments break off the main plant, they can also reproduce, contributing to the formation of carpets of seaweed.Pelagic Sargassum is associated with the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean where vast beds of this free-floating seaweed are a habitat for many creatures such as microscopic plants, shells, shrimp, tiny crabs, sea horses and eels and are a nursery for four species of baby turtles and fish, including jacks, tuna and mahi-mahi. In fact, 120 species of fish and more than 120 invertebrates make their home among the plants. Migrating schools of fish also use the dense mats of weed as a refuge from predators such as sailfish and marlin, and seabirds and shore birds feed on the seaweed’s bounty.Ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic Current and the North Equatorial Current transport Sargassum and it is found naturally in the northern Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Yet mats and lines of it are now being seen in areas where it has not been reported before or is very rare, and blooms have been reported in areas of the Atlantic not directly associated with the Sargasso Sea, such as the coast of South America. There may be multiple sources for the seaweed proliferation currently affecting the Caribbean and it may come ashore in different locations at different times during the year.

Where does the seaweed affecting the Mexican Caribbean come from?To date, the origin of the Sargassum coming ashore on the coast of Quintana Roo and other parts of the Caribbean is unknown, however, marine biologist Rosa Rodriguez Martinez of the National Autonomous University of Mexico Marine Research Field Station in Puerto Morelos told us about one possible theory. It may come from as far afield as the coast of Brazil, thousands of kilometers to the south.This was the source area for a massive island of seaweed spotted in April 2011 to the north of the Amazon estuary in Brazil where it had never been seen before. By July the same year it had dispersed into smaller patches and tons of it were washing up on beaches in the Eastern Caribbean from Trinidad to the Dominican Republic, where it became known as “the golden tide.” Ocean currents had even taken it across the Atlantic to West Africa, where it affected a stretch of coastline from Sierra Leone to Ghana.Deforestation continues unchecked in the Amazon Basin and northern Brazil and without tree roots to anchor them tropical soils are easily eroded. It is thought that higher than average rainfall levels in 2010 and 2011 washed greater amounts of soil, organic waste, fertilizers and other chemicals into the sea. This influx of nutrients, which could also have been supplemented by nutrients from upwellings of colder water at sea and dust from the Sahara, may have provided optimum conditions for the alga to thrive.

Why is there so much seaweed at caribbean beachesTheories abound on what is causing the seaweed to bloom in such huge quantitiesRising water temperatures due to climate change and excessive nutrients from nitrate fertilizers, pesticides and waste that find their way into the ocean are thought to be important factors. The water temperatures in the Caribbean are warmer this year and traces of chemicals can affect the balance of the marine ecosystem in many ways.Other theories are that the appearance of drifting mats of Sargassum may be due to changes in wind patterns linked to El Niño that affect the ocean currents that circle the Sargasso Sea or that it is an environmental impact that can be traced to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or to oil exploration. Other scientists attribute it to the use of certain types of pesticides in southern US, Colombia and Brazil that find their way into rivers and then into the sea.Different factors may have come into play in different areas affected by Sargassum. Marine biologists do not know yet whether this is a rare event and or whether it will prove to be cyclical.

When seaweed comes ashoreSeaweed has always washed ashore on the Quintana Roo coast; it is a natural occurrence. The fact that this season it is doing so in much larger quantities does not mean that the beaches of the Mexican Caribbean are dirty or polluted. In fact, Cancun was recently awarded the prestigious Blue Flag for six of its beaches, an international standard of excellence for beach cleanliness and many other area beaches in in the process of applying for Blue Flag certification.When Sargassum is beached, marine creatures that are trapped die and begin to decay; this is what causes the distinctive, short-lived fishy odor, not the seaweed itself.Although seaweed is completely harmless and does not sting, it is a good idea to shower after swimming in the sea and wash your swimsuit. Sometimes microscopic creatures called hydrozoa, tiny jellyfish or sand flies are trapped in the weed and a few of them may occasionally cause a rash, by rinsing thoroughly you will be eradicating them.

What’s being done?Beach cleaning is being carried out on a daily basis in Cancun, Puerto Morelos, Playa del Carmen, Cozumel and other resort areas such as Akumal, Tulum and Mahahual. In the third week of July, the Federal Government authorized additional funds for Municipal governments to hire more people to clean the beaches and conservation groups, soldiers and people from all walks of life are also volunteering to help remove the seaweed that washes ashore.As it is sea turtle season, most cleaning is done manually and there are restrictions on heavy machinery such as bulldozers that could damage nests and their precious eggs. In Cancun, the authorities have given permission for lightweight diggers to be used during the day and only on the sand that is closest to the waves. The methods used will be carefully controlled to prevent damage to the beaches.Reconnaissance flights and boat patrols will keep track of patches of seaweed as they move north through the Yucatan Channel, identifying those that could make landfall.All along the coast, turtle guardians are keeping an eye on adult turtles coming ashore to nest on beaches where there may be seaweed and will watch over the hatchlings as they are born later in the season to ensure that they do not become entangled in it.The local authorities, hotel associations and Mexican environmental agencies SEMARNAT and CONANP are working with local biologists, and experts from the Universidad Autónoma de México on a statewide cleaning and disposal plan for the seaweed.Once the salt has leached out of seaweed it can be composted and it makes an excellent fertilizer. In Puerto Morelos, some of the seaweed removed from the beaches is already being deposited in an old quarry and it could eventually be used in the parks and gardens.In other areas of the Mexican Caribbean, although not in Cancun, the seaweed is being buried in the dunes and the soil formed will boost plant growth. Seaweed anchors the sand and helps protect the shoreline from erosion. When seaweed is left to decompose naturally on the sand, it actually contributes to the growth of the beach.Sargassum is consumed in other parts of the world or given to farm animals as part of a dietary supplement and it is believed to have healing properties. These uses may also be studied as part of the disposal program.

Satellite trackingGovernment and tourism officials and local institutions are now in contact with experts from Texas A & M University who are working with NASA to use satellite imagery to track the floating patches of seaweed as they are move through the Caribbean, the Yucatan Channel and the Gulf of Mexico. With more information they can forecast when larger patches of seaweed are approaching the coast and can plan accordingly. This project also monitors the Sargasso situation in the Caribbean islands, from Grenada and Barbados to Puerto Rico.In another initiative, the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory at the University of Southern Mississippi is collecting reports from all over the Caribbean. Using the information they receive from different parts of the Caribbean, the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, satellite imagery and the movements of marine currents they can identify Sargassum source areas, track the floating seaweed and try to understand why it is reproducing so quickly.

Beach cleaning at Royal ResortsAt Royal Resorts beach cleaning brigades are out every morning. The fact that they work before the hottest part of the day means that you may not see them but they are doing their utmost to keep the sand looking beautiful.We will give you further updates on the seaweed and the beach cleaning program as more information becomes available.Sources and Further Information:Maestra en Ciencias Rosa Rodriguez Martinez, Unidad de Sistemas Arrecifales del Instituto de Ciencias del Mar y Limnología de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Puerto MorelosDoyle, E and J Franks. 2015Sargassum Fact Sheet. Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries InstituteRadioFormula

While most hackathons focus on the code being created, emotion took center stage in this one. More than 200 software developers gathered at the Engine-4 incubator space in Bayamón, Puerto Rico in August to create solutions that addressed natural disasters. For two days, local NGOs, representatives from relief organizations and developers from the local startup […]

Customer experience is the focus for two fintech accelerators, one run by Commerzbank, the other by FIS. FIS Global, a financial services software provider that works with 20,000 banks and corporate treasury clients, is looking at improving the customer experience by offering natural language processing (NLP) solutions, meaning customers can be understood speaking in a natural way. “Whether […]

The Argentine Senate voted 38 to 31 against a proposed measure that would have legalized a woman's right to seek an abortion into the 14th week of pregnancy.

Senators announced the vote results after an impassioned debate that ran into the early hours of Thursday.

Women in Argentina are currently only legally permitted to seek abortions in cases of rape or if the mother's health is at risk.

Uruguay and Cuba are the only Latin American countries that now have broadly legalized abortion.

Argentine senators rejected a bill to legalize abortion after an impassioned debate ran into the early hours of Thursday, pushing back against a groundswell of support from a surging abortion rights movement.

The Senate voted 38 to 31 against the proposed measure, which would have legalized a woman's right to seek an abortion into the 14th week of pregnancy. The bill had narrowly passed in the lower house in July.

Families and clergy in baby-blue bandanas gathered outside the congressional palace as the result came in just before 3 a.m., waving Argentine flags in support of the Catholic Church's anti-abortion stance in Pope Francis' home country.

"What this vote showed is that Argentina is still a country that represents family values," anti-abortion activist Victoria Osuna, 32, told Reuters.

Current Argentine law only permits abortions in cases of rape, or if the mother's health is at risk.

'This is not over'

Abortion rights supporters, clad in green bandanas that have become a symbol of the movement, danced to drum lines and swarmed the city's streets to the end, despite a biting wind and cold rain.

Many had camped in front of Argentina's National Congress since Wednesday night.

"I'm still optimistic. It didn't pass today, but it will pass tomorrow, it will pass the next day," said abortion rights supporter Natalia Carol, 23. "This is not over."

Demonstrations outside Congress were largely peaceful, but small groups of protesters clashed with police following the results.

Some protesters through firebombs and set up flaming barricades, according to the Associated Press. Police officers responded to the non-peaceful demonstrations with tear gas.

Uruguay and Cuba are the only Latin American countries that now have broadly legalized abortion.

In Brazil, the Supreme Court is set to consider whether current law, which allows terminating pregnancies only in cases of rape, fetal deformation or when the mother's life is in danger, is unconstitutional.

But passing a pro-abortion law will face hurdles in Brazil's increasingly conservative Congress, with a growing Evangelical Christian caucus that is staunchly opposed.

Women's rights advocates, however, hope that a more liberal judiciary in Brazil will at least decriminalize abortion to help avoid deaths from botched terminations in a country where hundreds of thousands of women resort to clandestine clinics each year.

Ahead of the Senate vote in Argentina, President Mauricio Macri called the debate "a win for democracy." Macri said he was personally against abortion, but would sign the bill if it passed.

"Regardless of the result, today, democracy wins," Macri said ahead of the vote.

Thousands of women have died in illegal abortions

Argentina's abortion rights movement, backed by feminist groups galvanized in recent years to stop violence against women, argued that the bill would end unregulated abortions that government data show as the leading cause of maternal deaths.

There are at least 350,000 illegal abortions in Argentina every year, the Ministry of Health estimates, though international human rights groups say the number may be higher, with dozens of women dying each year as a result.

Activists have estimated that since 1983, at more than 3,000 women in the country have died of illegal abortions.

The move to legalize abortion in Argentina is a "public health and human rights imperative," said New York-based Human Rights Watch.

"Just because the bill got shot down, it will not stop the movement," said Paula Avila-Guillen, a director of Women's Equality Center, an abortion rights advocacy group. "We will be there at the next legislative opportunity."

Pope Francis, who is from Argentina, denounced abortion earlier this year, calling it the "white glove" equivalent of the Nazi-era eugenics program. He urged families to "accept the children that God gives to them."

Argentina became the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriage in 2010.

The movement Ni Una Menos, or Not One Less, was launched in the country in recent years to fight violence against women.

Born and raised in Miami to Cuban immigrant parents, Christie Prades understudied the role of Gloria in the Broadway production of ON YOUR FEET! Her past regional credits include In the Heights (Vanessa - Broadway World Award winner), West Side Story and The D*Word.

Multiple Grammy Award-winning musicians from Miami Sound Machine are also on the road with the National Tour of ON YOUR FEET!, including Music Director Clay Ostwald(keyboards), who is Assistant Music Director of Miami Sound Machine, Teddy Mulet (trombone), Mike Scaglione (reeds), Jorge Casas (bass), who is Music Director of Miami Sound Machine, and Edwin Bonilla (percussion). The other members of the orchestra include Emmanuel Schvartzman (Associate Music Director/keyboards), Jose Ruiz(trumpet), Stephen Flakus (guitar), JeanChristophe Leroy (percussion) and Colin Taylor (drums).

With the political world holding its breath in anticipation, Hope n' Change finally endorses a Presidential candidate...

While lacking the enthusiasm evinced by many Trump supporters, Hope n' Change opines that "Donald Trump is potentially a yuuuuge disrupter at a time when our political system needs huge disruption. Our nation would be far more likely to survive his possible policy failures than even a single term of Hillary Clinton's toxic policy successes."

This belief is immediately confirmed when yet another federal agency is revealed to have been corrupted by proximity to the Clinton Machine...

After laundry-listing the many, many ways that Hillary had lied, evaded, and thoroughly compromised national security with her secret email server, FBI Director James Comey decides that no charges should be pressed because:

A) He is apparently a complete political whoreB) His family was being held at gunpointC) He believes that women (bless their hearts) are just too darn stupid to understand computers, national security, and lawsD) Hillary made a pact with Satan which involves fellating lepers in Hell for all eternityE) All of the above. Which, frankly, we're pretty sure is the right answer.

Energized by this undeserved "Get Out of Jail Free" card, Hillary immediately seizes on new ways to make voters hate her...

Following a black sniper's assassination of five Dallas police officers who were providing security for a "Black Lives Matter" protest, Hillary bravely declares that the actual problem is that white people need to do a better job of listening and, bizarrely, that Wall Street needs greater transparency. Based on her strong statement, an increasing number of voters begin to suspect she's using narcotics.

Meanwhile, GOP heads explode when Senator Ted Cruz appears at the Republican National Convention and speaks passionately about the need to defend freedom and the Constitution, but fails to endorse Trump by name for reasons no one can explain...

But July isn't done with us yet. Following a series of scandals revealing sabotage against the Bernie Sanders campaign, the DNC meets to celebrate democracy by anointing a candidate selected by unelected "superdelegates"...

AUGUST

With the wind at her back, which is helpful in keeping her upright, Hillary starts fleshing out what revolutionary policies she hopes to bring to the presidency other than the ability to pee while sitting down...

But concerns grow about the candidate's health as she is increasingly seen struggling with simple tasks like speaking without coughing up a lung, getting both eyes to point in the same direction, or telling the truth...

But undaunted and pumped full of amphetamines and opioids, Hillary throws herself into intense preparation for the upcoming Presidential debates...

And speaking of sex escapades (which is pretty much synonymous with speaking about the Clintons) another one rears its...uh...head when Anthony Weiner, the oft-disgraced husband of Hillary's right hand woman Huma Abedin, is discovered to be emailing bonergrams to an under-aged girl...

Saying "enough is enough," Huma gives up on Weiner (not that there's anything wrong with that) and prepares to face new challenges in...

SEPTEMBER

When asked to answer yet more questions about her totally illegal scheme to evade the Freedom of Information Act and, as an unexpected bonus, give away all of our nation's secrets, Hillary is struck - apparently forcefully - with a brilliant idea...

Yes, the woman who wants to be President of the United States claims to have such substantial brain damage that she can't remember anything which happened while she was engaged in criminal activity. Which is to say her entire adult life.

Shortly thereafter, Clinton speaks to an adoring throng of hired enthusiasts at an LGBT fundraiser and makes a statement which convinces even hardened skeptics that she has gangrenous grey matter...

"To be grossly generalistic," she grossly cackled, "you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic— you name it!"

Surprisingly, at least to Democrats, it turns out that many Americans don't appreciate being mocked, disparaged, and slandered by corrupt elites. Which is why it's (ahem) fortunate for Clinton that the public is soon distracted by a terrorist bomb blast...

29 people are hurt (and thankfully none killed) when a bomb is detonated in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York. Chelsea Clinton swears "it's just a coincidence" and "I'm working on an alibi."

Hoping to get her media narrative back on track, Hillary Clinton puts avuncular socialist Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail to say that he no longer despises everything Hillary stands for, and that he's come to the life-changing (and possibly life-saving) realization that she is the most honest, refreshing, and ethical politician ever born...

In fairness to Bernie, maybe he was just trying on his "shameless whore" costume to make ready for...

OCTOBER

Suddenly, the campaign is rocked by a series of well-coordinated (if loosely fact-checked) attacks on Donald Trump's finances...

The NY Times goes "front page crazy" with a story screaming that over the past few years, Donald Trump may have paid all the federal income tax he legally owed - which possibly, and only possibly, equaled "none." Not only is "Man Pays Correct Amount of Taxes" not a scandal, it's not even interesting.

What is interesting is that the story was written based on illegally obtained information which was leaked to the public. Democratic spokespeople offer high praise for the publication of illegally leaked documents, then report a weird feeling "like a crow just stepped on my grave."

In a shocking revelation that even offends serial rapist Bill Clinton, an old audiotape reveals that Donald Trump once used the word "pussy" in a conversation which did not involve cats. Even worse, a (very small) parade of women come forward, dabbing tears, to share tortured memories of being "kissed without permission" by Donald Trump, who used only Tic Tacs for breath control.

Unfortunately for Hillary, none of this is as interesting as Wikileaks' release of thousands of documents detailing the corruption of the Clinton Foundation, Hillary's "pay for play" use of the State Department to solicit bribes, and the overall sleaziness of everyone in the Democratic party.

Suddenly finding illegally obtained information which was leaked to the public abhorrent, the media and the White House blame Russian hackers because it sounds better than "our own idiocy." Joe Biden warns of draconian counter measures...

In the midst of all this, early voting begins, with record numbers of voters flooding to the polls to decide which of the two least popular candidates in American history will win...

But wait! With Halloween in the air, James Comey doesn't need to dress up as a ghost to scare the sheet out of Hillary - he simply reopens her "thing that wouldn't die" email espionage case only days before the election.

Hilariously, it turns out that in the course of investigating Anthony Weiner's underage sexting activities, the FBI has discovered thousands of Hillary's State Department emails on his personal laptop...as well as on his laptop computer.

And so the stage is set for...

NOVEMBER

Following a hostage video in which James Comey, bruised and bound, says that nothing suspicious other than Top Secret documents was found on Weiner's "spank bank" computer, Election Day arrives at last.

Soon after which the grins fade, the champagne goes flat, and (according to trustworthy sources on the Left) Armageddon arrives...

Trump wins to the shock and disbelieving horror of liberals everywhere...

Apparently unaware of how the American voting system works, those on the Left are further devastated by the realization that while Hillary won the popular vote, it's only the critical electoral college vote that decides the Presidency...

While many anti-Americans take the news of Trump's victory badly, perhaps the most convincing display of grief comes from Fidel Castro who actually goes to the trouble of dropping dead...

Which at long last brings us to...

DECEMBER

In the weeks following the election, it becomes clear that American voters were sick of being denigrated, disrespected, and lied to by their own government. Tired of seeing their health insurance costs skyrocket while their benefits plummeted. And unwilling to accept a stagnant economy which seemingly offered jobs only to hedge fund managers and fry cooks.

Granted, not everyone saw the election results in the same way...

When his analysis is roundly laughed at, Barack Obama goes back to his default position of claiming that the election was somehow "hacked" by evil Russians who, inexplicably, liked the idea of Donald Trump having a nuclear arsenal.

The soon-to-be ex-president declares the alleged hacking to be a grave and immediate existential threat to our nation, then takes swift action by boarding Air Force One for another extended, multi-million dollar vacation in Hawaii...

Back on the mainland, the electoral college finally meets to officially cast their votes. And once again, a dazed and broken Hillary has to settle for second place...

With only days left in the year, Americans finally breathe a sigh of relief - confident that they can enjoy the holidays without any vacationing presidents suddenly launching a vicious sneak attack on one of our closest allies. They are, of course, wrong...

With assistance (and likely direction) from the Obama administration, the U.N. passes a resolution condemning Israel, eroding that nation's legitimacy and chances for eventual peace. It is a transparently petty and vindictive act from a petty and vindictive president bent on burning the world down if he can't be in charge.

In the final days of his wretched administration, he also admits floods of refugees and illegals into the country, grants early release to a record number of felons, and puts thousands of new regulations in place to hamper the American economy under Donald Trump.

Which is why the stroke of midnight on December 31st has never been sweeter...

Happy New Year from Stilton Jarlsberg and Hope n' Change Cartoons...which, after 8 long years, finally has actual hope for change.

If we had to sum up 2016 in a single word, it would be...unprintable. Seriously, we'd be working hard to come up with the vilest, most appalling, utterly disgusting and likely illegal word in our rich, albeit genuinely filthy vocabulary - and even then we'd fail to do justice to this rotten collection of months.

Fortunately, we don't have to sum things up in a single word. We have this entire page to work with, so let's dive straight into...

JANUARY

The year hits the ground running (like an abscessed boil) when the Post Office releases a "Forever" stamp commemorating the Muslim festival Eid al-Adha, which honors the willingness of Ibrahim to slit his son's throat after being "triple dog dared" by Allah. As part of the festival, modern Muslims are still expected to sacrifice their best farm animal...assuming they have the financial ability to first buy it an orange jumpsuit and get it to pose for a Youtube video.

And speaking of people associated with Youtube videos, Hillary Clinton stays busy denying that she ever had classified documents on her private email server. An assertion which, like everything else Hillary has ever said, turns out to be wildly untrue.

Of course, not all newsworthy events were domestic. Or even comprehensible...

John "You Rang?" Kerry comes out with the least encouraging pronouncement imaginable about the throat-cutting, suicide-bombing, allegedly non-Islamic murderers of ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, or whatever the hell other name the administration thinks likely to be unrecognized by Democratic voters.

Specifically, Kerry further downgrades our nation's goal from "destroying, degrading, or disrupting" the maniacal killers to merely "denting" them. His goal apparently being to make Hillary look like only the second worst Secretary of State ever, just in time for...

FEBRUARY

Early in the Democratic debate process, Martin O'Malley shocks everyone by announcing that he'd dropped out of the race - which was the first time anyone knew he'd been in the race.

Following Hillary Clinton's discovery in Iowa that she is less popular among young females than a yeast infection, Hillary asks herself what vivacious, high-powered celebrity superstar could help her reel in youthful female votes in New Hampsire, and she comes up with...

But just as things get really bleak for Hillary, the entire political landscape is changed by an unexpected death...

Beloved conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia suddenly dies in bed with a pillow on his head. A local judge pronounces the death due to natural causes without seeing the body or ordering an autopsy, because Obamacare doesn't cover those things.

In the following days, Obama decides to skip Scalia's funeral owing to an absolutely unavoidable scheduling conflict involving a critical tee time...

The country will not see such a blatantly petty snub again until, well, a few days later in...

MARCH

"If I didn't attend a funeral for a sitting Supreme Court Justice," the president may well have said, "I sure as hell won't be wasting my time going to one for some first lady. There's nothing less important than a first lady!"

In his place, the president appropriately sends...the first lady.

And speaking of skipping commitments, seemingly unstoppable primary candidate Donald Trump has a few clearly expressed ideas on the subject...

But of course, there's more than just an election going on. Barack Obama is still holding the reins and shaping critical foreign policy. Which is how we ended up with...

In his never-ending quest to build a legacy, the president tries to normalize relations with the oppressive communist dictatorship of Cuba in hopes of increasing the number of investment opportunities for his wealthy donors, and decreasing the number of Cuban immigrants whose children might grow up to become conservative GOP presidential candidates.

But only days later, the world is again shocked by a brutal act of terrorism - this time in a Brussels airport. Despite his busy travel schedule, Obama immediately swings into action...

Rather than doing diddly-squat about the carnage in Brussels, Obama attends a baseball game with new BFF Raul Castro, then jets off to Argentina where he performes a pelvis-grinding tango at a state dinner to prove his masculinity to ISIS.

Which brings us to...

APRIL

To help shore up support from women who just can't seem to understand the whole complicated "birds & bees" thing, Hillary declares that "unborn persons" have no rights - making it perfectly acceptable to take viable children in the final days (or hours) of gestation and turn them into chop suey. An observation that Bernie Sanders quickly echoes, while admitting that it's put him off Chinese take-out for awhile.

But life and death issues soon take a backseat to a far more important crisis in America...

Springsteen and other (ahem) "artists" boycott North Carolina following passage of a law which segregates bathroom privileges based exclusively on an individual's God-given plumbing rather than their current (and sometimes whimsically flexible) gender self-identification. This kicks off a firestorm of controversy around the country as liberals try to force businesses to create new bathrooms for each of the 51 sexual genders (no, really) recognized by Facebook, or at least let anyone who enjoys peeing in front of kids do so to fight discrimination.

The country becomes so embroiled in the issue that it becomes necessary for Barack Obama to remind the nation who truly suffers from discrimination in our wretched country...

The tone deaf president assembles a group of allegedly popular rappers (including Nicki Minaj, Busta Rhymes, J. Cole, Wale, DJ Khaled, and others we couldn't possibly pick out of a police line-up) to help with his "Brother's Keeper" initiative which is designed to encourage young black men to avoid incarceration for undocumented acts of wealth redistribution.

Unfortunately, during the president's remarks, rapper Rick Ross's court-ordered ankle bracelet goes off. It turns out that the man selected by Mr. Obama to serve as an exemplary racial role model is required to wear the device until his trial date for aggravated assault and battery, pistol-whipping, and kidnapping.

Were the other dignitaries at the summit nonplussed? Based on their actual pictures below, we're guessing not...

Meanwhile, as the primaries wear on, people finally start realizing that Trump might actually become the GOP nominee...

By the way, in case you don't know, the cartoon above is a tribute to "Forbidden Planet," which is the best sci-fi movie ever made. If you've never seen it, get your hands on it and watch it NOW while the rest of us move on to...

MAY

By a significant margin, Hoosiers go to the polls to declare that they find Trump to be the candidate who is outstanding in the field. And trust us, Indiana folk (like us!) love jokes about fields. But feeling distinctly un-loved, Cruz says "enough" and drops out of the race, practically guaranteeing Trump's nomination.

Assuming, of course, that he doesn't fall prey to the latest death-dealing malady inflaming the media...

In response to the dread threat hypothetically presented by mosquito-borne Zika virus, Barack Obama requests $2 billion to prevent the blood-sucking parasites coming across our southern border from wreaking destruction. The $2 billion will be used to put the young mosquitoes in good schools, settle their families in middle class neighborhoods, and give the grown mosquitoes some walking around money until they can find permanent blood-sucking jobs in government.

That is, unless someone intends to drastically reduce the number of blood-sucking jobs in government...

Donald Trump "seals the deal" when his delegate count pushes over the magic number of 1,237 with multiple states left to go to further pad his margin of victory. The people have spoken - and they're using very short (frequently 4-letter) words as they storm into...

JUNE

Because Donald Trump's blunt candor is generating so many news stories, Barack Obama jumps back into the erudition spotlight with a devastatingly brutal dissection of contemporaneous political rhetoric and offers wise analytical advice...

Of course, there's no "okey-doke" going on in the Democratic primaries. Everything is honest, legit, and above board...

Bernie Sanders grows peevish when the Associated Press declares Hillary to be the overall winner of Democratic primaries which haven't happened yet. It's almost like a conspiracy of some sort is working against him - but that's crazy, right?

Then without warning...

Terror returns to the United States in the form of an ISIS-inspired lunatic who kills and wounds over 100 people at a Gay nightclub in Orlando, before being sent straight to Hell by a policeman's bullet.

Authorities struggle to discern the killer's motives, having nothing to go on other than his actual 911 phone call in which he swears allegiance to ISIS, and shouts"Allahu Akbar" during his death-dealing spree.

Such a vile act is obviously unacceptable to the Obama administration, and they move quickly to let future terrorists know what they'll be up against...

Frankly, all of these events are getting so overwhelming that Hope n' Change needs a little time off - so we play hooky for a week, confident that it will be a slow period for news.

“The more street food we have, the more it’s embraced by every income strata, the better world we have.” ~Anthony Bourdain Jonathan Gold, the first restaurant critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, called food trucks “the new incubators of culinary innovation.” Indeed, chefs

In this Marketing Over Coffee: Learn about the past, present and future of esports! Direct Link to File Brought to you by our sponsors: ahrefs and MarketingProfs Hurrah – the esports gaming agency The average gamer is not a 15 year old boy in the basement The South Korean Epicenter Public sector esports incubators Fortnight … Continue reading Talking esports with Angela Natividad!

"The Central Intelligence Agency - in its entirety - is the national political warfare center, looking out from the US on the world. When you look inward, it clearly WAS the FBI, working hard to make a king/queen that would be satisfactory to the swamp. The Agency had a very small hand in the more recent attempt at a coup against President Trump."

Au contraire, mon ami.

Christians In Action gathers intelligence on other countries, sometimes which is even both accurate and timely(!) - excepting things like the invasion of South Korea, the Suez Crisis, any of a dozen Middle Eastern wars, Soviet missiles in Cuba, Soviet troops in Cuba, the erection of the Berlin Wall, the falling of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Soviet Union, or any baker's dozen of terroristic acts from 1968-present, inclusive, but other than those petty failings, almost never takes a hand in doing everything outside of espionage or actual direct action. They generally suck at the things they're supposed to do, let alone the things we wish they'd do.

The other eleventy venues of operations, the ones described by Culper in his post, and those actively practiced by, for instance, the Chicoms, in every venue besides open warfare, are precisely what neither the Agency, the State Department, nor any other cabinet agency do, even though such is exactly their mission, either directly or in ancillary ways.

There is, as the referenced RAND study notes, no coordinated propaganda messaging, cyber warfare (offensive nor defensive, although Far Beyond Insanity likes to think they've "got that", they're mainly only concerned with government systems, not the other 98% of the economy, nor anything remotely offensive), no economically coherent outlook, and so on, ad infinitum.

And plainly, even the DoD is more concerned with internecine turf wars than a coherent defense strategy, or they wouldn't continue pursuing SJW nonsense and the jackassical continued deployment of the terminally flawed Thunderjug (which our allies with options are dropping like a hot iron ingot) in preference to three more carrier groups and ancillary surface ships, a strategic sealift capability, and doubling or tripling our SSNs and increasing our SSBNs, let alone halting the criminal hollowing of the current Army into little more than twice the size of the USMC any time since 1946. And they couldn't even had they the will and foresight to address all that, because the entitlement beast has eaten the meat, the potatoes, the seed corn, and left them nothing but gnawed bones to work with, in perpetuity.

And they've been abetted in this by 40 years of the most worthless congresses in US history (and historically, that's saying something).

We're on our way to becoming Britistan 2.0 at light speed, when what we really need, soon in a critical way, is for someone to institute our own version of Churchill's Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare(a great backpacking read, and enthusiastically and unhesitatingly recommended to the readership, btw, as both germane and informative in current times), on steroids, and with the brief of kicking everyone's @$$ who would challenge our survival, our supremacy, and our ability to prosper in any or all of the realms outlined in Culper's post.

That's not only something the CIA cannot do, it's something they actively suck at, any time they've been so tasked.

They should be folded wholesale, the dregs and dross winnowed for any actual talent coupled with the blazing desire to serve America and not the bureaucracy, and the dross flushed out of the pipes once and for all. Doing the same thing to the Feebies, as recent events have demonstrated, is about twenty to forty years overdue as well.

The blood from Langley and the Hoover building should be running waist deep coming down the steps of both agencies, and for the next several years. Anybody employed or hired by the current regime should be considered inherently suspect until proctologically proven innocent, by which I mean a full grand jury background investigation and zero tolerance for anything less than political virginity, and the entire house cleaned out and re-stocked with actual Americans, not agency hacks and bureaucrats, and the slightest degree of wavering afterwards should be dealt with in the most draconian manners imaginable. Permanent assignment to duties at McMurdo Station, including being given a parka and binoculars and told to keep all-directional watch on the horizon in 12 hour shifts, should be the kindest form of in-house punishment contemplated for any future failings, going forward for the next decade.

The mere existence of cesspit lizards like Brennan, McCabe, Strzok, and Page proves that the gentlest instrument used to clean house at the FBI and CIA ought to be actual M1A1 flamethrowers, used in platoon strength, from the roof to the basement, and all the nooks and crannies in between.

See the original story in Japanese. Our readers may recall that we have covered Takuma Terakubo, formerly working for Tokyo-based startup incubator Samurai Incubate, has established Leapfrog Ventures for the purpose to invest in seed-stage startups in East Africa. We have just got an update from them regarding their first investment. The firm unveiled that

Mars, Incorporated, the global pet care, confectionery and food business, and one of the world’s biggest accounts appointed MediaCom to handle its media planning and buying duties across most of the company’s portfolio. The result follows a competitive pitch against Omnicom, led by Hearts and Science, and Publicis, led by Starcom. MediaCom had previously managed media planning globally for the client and buying in over 20 markets, including Mexico, Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands. The entire global business – which is worth £1.4bn globally, according to data from Recma – will now be consolidated into MediaCom, including buying for the US and China. To deliver on the assignment, MediaCom will work as part of GroupMW, a GroupM solution, tapping into the resources of GroupM and WPP agencies to deliver outstanding results for Mars. Also Read: Eureka Forbes appoints Taproot Dentsu as its creative agency This decision connects to the larger transformation Mars has been driving with its marketing and media agenda – looking to build competitive advantage through insights, investment, and innovation. With an ever-changing marketing and retail landscape, Mars have been putting an increased focus on driving value from fast approaches to data, new creative and content models, and ways to incubate innovation. “This partnership will be a crucial accelerator in our ambition to be quicker, bolder and even more innovative when it comes to meeting our consumer needs. It brings thought leadership and actionable use of data and insights to meet our media needs,” said Andrew Clarke, Chief Marketing and Customer Officer at Mars. “It was impressive to see some of the fresh, challenging approaches from all three of the agencies. It’s helped evolve our thinking throughout the pitch and inspired us to be even bolder in our ambition. GroupM created a custom operating model for us which enables us to put data at the heart of our decision making, drive speed at a global, local and campaign level, and use our resources efficiently,” said Rob Rakowitz, Global Media Director at Mars. “Building on our existing remit, and extending our 25-year relationship, we, along with our GroupMW colleagues, will now be managing all of Mars’ media buying, as well as their data & analytics,” said Stephen Allan, Worldwide Chairman & CEO of MediaCom. “This confirms our place as the trusted media partner to one of the world’s most prestigious advertisers.” The full assignment will go into effect on 1 January 2019 and the transition period will run from August until December 2018.

It's been a long, hot summer with near record temperatures around the world. In Berlin, some are finding relief by going underground into old World War II bunkers. Plus, how ice cream in Cuba reveals the growing divide between rich and poor. Also, how the Basque language survived.

Guessing you guys never used a drone OR plastic explosive. First of all, what do drones do when they lose their signal to their encrypted controller? They don't get “disoriented”. Otherwise they'd be crashing all over the place in every country kids use them. They go to where they are programmed to go if they lose signal!....and where these went, says it was a staged attack as they apparently were flying back to where they came from when they were jammed which is opposite from where they were said to have come from...Oops! As far as plastic explosive? Can't be set off without a detonator creating a shockwave that goes through the PE. Can't be set off by fire, can't be set off by a bullet, can't be set off by a fall, that's kind of why you never hear of an unexpected explosion at a construction site. Lastly, they came from China. Who has close ties to China? The US? no...Colombia??? No. Maduro?? Owes them $120 billion! ...and lastly, lastly, it doesn't take a brain scientist to fake geolocation. Cuba's G2 which runs Venezuela's security forces, does it all the time. Interestingly, Maduro exposed more about how shoddy his protection rings are and his troops support level by having it video taped. Did the soldiers run towards him or run away. THAT said volumes! When the information points to something easy, take a deeper look.

Very early Thursday morning, the Senate in Argentina voted down a bill that would legalize elective abortion. The vote was 38-31, which included two abstentions and one absentee vote. Current law will remain in place which allows abortion in the case of the mother’s health is at risk or rape. Women can be imprisoned for up to four years if the current law is broken.

The proposal would have legally allowed abortion up to fourteen weeks. After the more liberal lower house, the Argentine Chamber of Deputies narrowly passed the bill by a vote of 129-125. President Mauricio Macri said he would not veto the bill if it passed both chambers.

Pro-abortion supporters were buoyed by the vote to legalize abortion in Ireland, also a predominantly Catholic country, last May. Support for the bill was framed in much the same way it is framed through-out Europe and in America. Those in favor describe abortion as a human right and a health care issue. Both descriptions seem ironic to me, though, as the lives lost in an abortion are denied the ultimate right to life and if the concern is health care, legal abortion is allowed in a hospital in the case of the mother’s health or if the woman has been raped.

As expected, the anticipation of the vote in the Senate Thursday morning brought out protesters from both sides of the argument. A large screen outside the National Congress in Bueno Aires building brought the news to the crowd. A heavy police presence tamped down skirmishes as they emerged. Abortion movement leaders from outside the country weighed in. They vow to continue the fight.

Celia Szusterman, trustee of the UK board of Pro-Mujer and director of the Latin America program at the Institute for Statecraft, told CNN that is was “a step backward for women’s rights and women’s health.”

She says it’s a “sad day… not only because of the way the vote went but the way the campaign for and against went. It was so divisive.”

Activists say they’ll keep pushing the bill, in the hope that it passes one day soon.

“It will happen because that’s the world — to increase rights and this is one of the fundamental rights that is still not available to women in Latin America,” Szusterman said.

While pro-abortion supporters chanted “legal abortion at the hospital” outside the National Congress, the Catholic Church held a “Mass for Life” in Buenos Aires. Pope Francis didn’t weigh in during the battle in his native country but he did issue a statement earlier when the bill passed in the lower house. He issued a letter as the debate began earlier this year.

While Pope Francis hasn’t addressed the legislation directly, he did speak out strongly against abortion just days after the bill was approved by the lower house — comparing abortion to avoid birth defects to Nazi eugenics.

The pontiff also issued a letter in March, as the abortion debate began, urging Argentines to “make a contribution in defense of life and justice.”

The movement for legalized abortion is called the green wave and it is spreading across South America. Supporters wear a green bandana as a symbol of the movement and they are now being spotted in Brazil where the legislation is being considered. Last year Chile voted to ease the country’s strict ban.

Supporters of the bill rallied across the region Wednesday, in Chile, Uruguay, Mexico and Peru, as well as across the Atlantic, in Spain.

The vote in Argentina was important because of the scope of those affected. Argentina’s population is the fourth largest in South America and would have become the largest country to allow legalized abortion. With the green wave moved on to Brazil now, legalized abortion has the potential to be allowed in the continent’s most populated country. In the case of Brazil, the proposed legislation would allow abortion up to twelve weeks.

Despite not passing in the Senate, the bill is significant: Argentina is the fourth most populous country in the region and would have become the biggest country to permit abortions. Brazil, the region’s most populous country, is also in the midst of exploring permitting abortion—the Supreme Court held a hearing earlier this week to decide whether to decriminalize it up to 12 weeks.

This would amount to a potential of 126 million women granted the right to legally end a pregnancy in a hospital. Abortion supporters in Chile, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Spain all hoped the vote in Argentina would help their path to legalization.

Currently, only three of the 33 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean allow elective abortions: Cuba, Uruguay, and Guyana. Abortions are also permitted in Mexico City. Meanwhile, six countries—Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Suriname—ban abortion entirely.

As an American woman, I’m struck by the short window being proposed by these bills. Fourteen weeks in Argentina and twelve weeks in Brazil seem quite restrictive compared to U.S. law. Also, these abortions in South America are intended to be performed in hospitals. Argentina is seen as a leader in the region.

Amnesty International’s Argentina director Mariela Belski explained that “Argentina is a country that has shaped the agenda for the region in terms of human rights,” referring to Argentina leading the way in legalizing same-sex marriage. And according to an Amnesty survey, 60% of Argentinians are in favor of abortion. The fight might not be over yet.

The legal battle moves on to Brazil now. Let’s hope for a similar outcome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmj6khcLM2Y Boz Scaggs is likely best known for his affiliation with the Steve Miller Band or 1976 songs like " Lido Shuffle " and " Lowdown ." But through the years, he's also been crafting jazz and blues albums in homage to his earliest influences. His new album Out of the Blues , due out July 27, is a continuation of that practice, capping off an unofficial trilogy of albums that channel his upbringing in Oklahoma and Texas while listening to blues and early rock and roll. Scaggs said he started playing the blues because it was a basic and simple form of guitar, but by now, he's steeped in its history. He recounts the way the blues spread to and across the United States — coming first from the Caribbean and up through Cuba, into New Orleans and up the river to the Mississippi Delta, then to cities, radio and clubs. "As it evolved, it picked up subtleties from every stop and from everyone who used the form," he says. "If you really get back to some of

yes just one word, hits you in your heart? Recently in a magazine the word "longing" just jumped out and grabbed me.

What does it mean: yearning, strong, persistent desire or craving, especially for something unattainable or distant: filled with longing for home. an instance of this: a sudden longing to see old friends.

For me longing means adventure!

I long for adventures.

I longed for adventure even as a child,

to travel to places yet unseen,

or climb the highest tree,

or take off on my bicycle and travel as far as I could go.

Right this moment my longing is to travel.

To tell you the truth it doesn't much matter where,

but just to go, see, savor, learn, and embrace whatever there is out there.

The CIA failed with its infamous April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

In Trenton, officials have difficulty in keeping pigs at bay as residents discard trash seemingly everywhere. Not even the St. Francis Cemetery is off limits as trash lines a portion of this sacred ground near Franklin St.

"Research confirms that every decade since 1974, conservatives’ trust in scientists has decreased."
So what happened in that decade of the early 70's? NASA started abandoning science and engineering and EPA started abusing them. There's more, of course. The Viet Nam war ended, but Universities had become incubators of leftist social thought. Downhill ever since.

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Aug. 10 – Paint N Cheers – Cuban artist Antonio Cubelo will be bringing his collection of works to Paint N Cheers for art enthusiasts to enjoy. His artwork comprises of vibrant portraits and brilliant cityscapes. Wine and cheese will be provided, and guests are welcome to ask questions and converse with Cubelo. This event […]

Police officers who investigated the death of a scuba diver have concerns that others on the fateful trip have colluded in a cover-up. Thai national Bua-Ngoen "Goy" Thongsi, who had been living in Christchurch, failed to surface...

President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were “traitors” to Hispanics in the U.S. for dithering on immigration when Democrats controlled the presidency and both chambers of Congress, a Cuban-American television journalist now seeking a U.S. House seat said Thursday.

While eminently debatable, the most important TV show is probably I Love Lucy.
It caused millions of people to purchase TV sets.
It popularized the sitcom format.
It revealed that the real money for a TV show was in syndicating the re-runs.
It was the most popular TV show originating from the West Coast, causing production of almost all sitcoms to move to Los Angeles.
It's still popular today.
(HBD side note: As Steve Sailer loves to point out, Cubans like Desi were obviously considered white by Americans. That's why it was fine for him to marry and impregnate a Northern European like Lucy.)

BroadwayWorld has a first look at Goodspeed's production of OLIVER! Check out all new photos from the production below!

Charles Dickens' beloved orphan makes his Goodspeed debut in the hope-filled musical set in the dark shadows of Victorian London. Bounced from workhouse to forced labor, Oliver Twist escapes to the streets where he meets Fagin, the Artful Dodger and a band of child pickpockets. Will he find love, home and happiness before it's too late? Consider yourself part of the family with the colorful international smash that gave the world "Where Is Love?," "Food! Glorious Food!" and "As Long As He Needs Me." Oliver! is made possible in part by Liberty Bank, the Lucille Lortel Foundation, Masonicare at Chester Village and The Shops at Mohegan Sun.

Oliver Twist is by Elijah Rayman. Elijah has been in productions since he was five years old, most recently in the role of Mamillius in The Winter's Tale at New York's Theatre for a New Audience. The role of Fagin is played by Donald Corren who returns to Goodspeed having previously appeared in the musical Nöel. His Broadway credits include Souvenir, and Torch Song Trilogy. Off-Broadway Donald has performed in The Fantastics (Jerry Orbach Theatre), Old Jews Telling Jokes (Westside Theatre) and The Soap Myth (Roundabout Black Box). Regionally Corren has performed in numerous productions including The Fabulous Lipitones (George Street Playhouse), My Fair Lady (The Guthrie Theatre) as well as productions at Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Arena Stage, Old Globe and many more.

Bill Sikes plays Brandon Andrus who previously performed in the Goodspeed productions of Annie Get Your Gun and Camelot. Mr. Andrus was in the 2014 Broadway revival of Side Show and the National Tours of Jersey Boys and Oklahoma!. Brandon's Off-Broadway and regional credits includeLiberty: A Monumental Musical (42West NYC), Carmen: An Afro-Cuban Jazz Musical (Olney Theatre), Spamalot (Geva Theatre), Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, A Musical (La Mirada), For Goodness Sake (Musicals Tonight) and many more. Actress EJ Zimmerman will play Nancy. Ms. Zimmerman's musical theatre credits include Broadway's Les Misérables, the First National Tour of Avenue Q, Off-Broadway's Disenchanted! and Miss Saigon at Riverside Theatre, Arvada Center and Actors' Playhouse. The Artful Dodger will be played by Gavin Swartz. In addition to playing Nigel in Broadway's Matilda the Musical he has performed regionally in Les Misérables and in A Christmas Story The Musical.

Oliver! is directed Rob Ruggiero who has directed numerous Goodspeed productions including Rags, Carousel, Camelot, Show Boat, 1776 and Fiddler on the Roof. He has received numerous awards and nominations for his regional work including multiple Connecticut Critics Circle Awards. Mr. Ruggiero conceived and directed the original musical revue Make Me a Song: The Music of William Finn which garnered him nominations for both Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards. Mr. Ruggiero currently serves as the Producing Artistic Director at TheaterWorks in Hartford, where he conceived and directed the highly successful Ella, a production that received Kevin Kline and Joseph Jefferson Awards and has since been produced at major regional theaters around the country.

Oliver! runs through September 8, 2018.

Tickets are available through the Box Office (860.873.8668), open seven days a week, or online at goodspeed.org. For show highlights, exclusive photos, special events and more, visit at goodspeed.org.

The Taino heritage is been in all the islands in the caribbean but in Dominican Republic there’s a higher genetic in African origin .... there’s more blacks in DR than the rest of the caribbean but you can’t tell them that ... kinky hair people say that they’re Indian but they blue black smh

Merlin1392 returns to talk about divecaching for the three hundred forty-fifth edition of the GeoGearHeads. Some of the divecaches he's hidden are "The Blind Squirrel" (GC6MZ37), "Neptune's Quest" (GC62ZK6), "Drunken Sailor" (GC6MZ42), and "Finding Nemo - Dori's Tale" (GC4P8MP). Those interested in connecting with other Divecachers might want to try Scubaboard. Chris spotted the "Geothermal SCUBA" (GC3DP13) at the end of the show as an example of an Earthcache which requires diving. The live video session from this Hangout On Air can be found on YouTube. Subscribe to the feed: Apple Podcasts RSS Stitcher Email: GeoGearHeads@CacheAManiacs.com